Rite Of Passage
by fanfar3
Summary: Sequel to "You Can't Take it Back". Ponyboy's experiences at the juvenile military camp as seen through his letters home and regular narrative. Mostly Pony's POV but there might be some Soda or Darry POV.
1. Chapter 1

Std disclaimer: I don't own anything about The Outsiders (book or movie, characters, TV scripts, or anything else)

**Std disclaimer: I don't own anything about The Outsiders (book or movie, characters, TV scripts, or anything else)**

June 20th, 1967

Dear Darry & Soda,

If you thought my hair looked funny when I came back from Windrixville, you should see it now. The busses got in too late last night, so first thing after breakfast this morning they lined us all up and cut it all off. Buzz city. Man, I look goofy. My ears stick out. I don't know why Marines are called "jarheads". They should be called "jugheads" because that's what everyone looks like. Bunch of Dumbos in camouflage. But it feels sort of tuff.

Up before dawn, before even a hint of daylight. They made us exercise for an hour before breakfast. The food here isn't so bad. Or maybe I'm just so hungry from all the fresh air and exercise that anything tastes okay. Sure could go for some chocolate cake, though.

Today was mostly about rules and orientation. Listening to the drill instructors shout out their plans for us and what to expect. We actually have something like classes for part of the day, except it's stuff about outdoor survival, learning drill formations and the different work details. There's a written rule about everything here, from the way you tuck in your shirt to the way you make your rack. That's a bed to y'all. And they've got weird words for everything, too.

The other guys here are okay so far, but none of us really had any chance to make trouble or talk much, so who really knows. Guess time will tell.

Right before dinner, we had to go through this thing they call the Roster. It's sort of like an obstacle course, like that TV show "Iron Man": tires, ropes, walls, barbed wire…you get the picture. You gotta go through three times in a row. Once for speed, once for accuracy, and once for stealth. That, along with about a million other things, is how we'll get to move up in the ranks. We're all just "Privates" now. Guess they think we gotta have something to strive for.

Anyway, I can do the running okay, but I sure wish I had Darry's muscles for the climbing and crawling parts. But I'm not the worst guy, which is good, because you sure don't want to stand out here. One guy puked after his second trip through the Roster and nobody's letting him hear the end of it. The drill instructor made him go through a fourth time.

There are five other guys in my barracks (cabin): Greg, Charlie, Kurt, Wade, and Paul. Wade's real skinny and pale. I couldn't figure for the life of me what he did wrong to get here, but one of the guys said some parents pay money to send their kids here to toughen them up. I don't think it's gonna work with Wade. The other guys razz him a lot.

Well, this is getting really long, and they just called for lights out. Write back soon, y'all.

Pony

* * *

I stuffed the letter in one of the envelopes Darry had given me, and I put it in a locked box on the wall near the door. I guess they had to start locking up the outgoing mail because some recruits in the last session were making alterations to other guys' letters. Breaking up with girlfriends, telling people off. Just pranks, but the camp started getting a lot of heat for sorts of things coming home in those letters.

I could have written all night long and not run out of stuff to say about the RCJMC. Some of the guys call it "Rat City" since "Raton" is "mouse" in Spanish. Guess they figured it was close enough.

Anyway, I figure it won't make a difference to tell them how messed up the place is, because there isn't anything they can do about it. If I don't finish the full nine weeks, the judge said he'd consider other arrangements. And if those other arrangements would be worse that what I've got now, I'm not sure I want to know.

It started right off the bus. There were eight colored flags up, and as each of us climbed out of the bus, we were randomly directed to stand by one of the flags. Mine was red. A big guy with a lantern jaw and mirrored glasses shouted at us the second the bus was clear. "Line up!"

He didn't like the way we lined up or how quick we did it. After yelling at us about that, he shouted, "I am Sergeant David McAvoy Kent, but you will call me Drill Sergeant! When you address me, you will call me 'Sir' or 'Drill Sergeant'. If you call me anything else, you will be very, very sorry." Then he raised the clipboard he was holding and called, "When I stand in front of you, you are to introduce yourself as follows: 'Private First name, Middle name, Last name.' Do not give me any nicknames. IS that understood?"

When nobody answered, his faced tightened up. "I said IS that understood?"

We didn't all say the same thing. Some of us said 'yes', some of us said 'yeah' and some of us remembered to say 'sir'. So he made us say it again, ordering us to use 'yes, sir'. And I thought Darry was bad, the way he'd tell me not to give him lip when I wasn't giving him any in the first place.

I was first in line, and when DS Kent stood in front of me, I said it just the way he'd asked us to. "Private Ponyboy Michael Curtis, sir."

He lit into me almost before I got the words out. "Private, do you have wax build up in your ears? Did I not just finish telling you how to speak your name?"

I didn't know whether to answer the first question or the second one or both. I stayed quiet. Darry's got nothing on him, I thought. I wondered why I ever feared Darry at all, when this guy was so much worse. But maybe it was because I knew already that there wasn't any pleasing DS Kent. I'd only thought there was no pleasing Darry. But there _really_ was no pleasing DS Kent.

"Private, I asked you a question!" he yelled, his face not an inch from mine. He didn't lay a hand on me, but I sure felt I'd been slugged just the same.

"Sir, no, sir!" I called back. Shouting just seemed the natural response. And I'd heard enough military stuff on TV shows that I could mimic it back all right. "That's not a nickname, sir."

"Well, then, Private, tell me just what kind of hippie-fied, mush-brained parents would name their child 'Ponyboy'?"

I didn't answer. I couldn't. If I did, I'd be agreeing with him, and I sure as hell didn't agree with him. Sure, I got a lot of grief over my name. He wasn't the first, and he wouldn't be the last. But I wasn't going to bad mouth my parents. I'd hoped it was just a rhetorical question, but that was stupid. He needed an answer, and he was going to get it no matter what. If he didn't, he'd look like a jerk in front of all of us guys.

"I asked you a question, Private!"

"Sir, I can't ask them, sir. My parents are dead, sir." I'd been looking just over his shoulder, but now I looked at myself in the mirror of his glasses. I bet if I could see his eyes they'd look like Deputy Simpson's. Soulless. Evil.

"Well, _Punyboy, _I guess that's why you ended up here!"

I didn't know what he meant by that, and I wasn't about to ask. But I felt a burning anger rise in the bottom of my stomach at the sneering, satisfied tone of his voice. He'd dug in deep, and he knew it. And it was my mistake to flinch when he called me that stupid, twisted name, because now I'd never get rid of it.

The only good news was, it wasn't just me. He found a way to bastardize every name given to him. Gregory Steven Cicarello. Greg _Sissyellow. _Paul Adam Puzo. Paul the _Putz._ Charles "Charlie" Edward Devon. After reaming him for adding his nickname, _Chunky _Devon. Kurt Edgar Slozack. Kurt _Slowact._ Wade Steven Milsap. Wade _Milksop._ And me. _Punyboy_ Curtis.

He made us run a circle around the whole outside perimeter of camp in the dark. Twice. I'm not sure just how big the grounds are, but I've run cross country races for track that took less time. Afterward, he shouted at us to "FALL IN!" I guess most of us had watched enough TV to know what it meant. All of us except Wade. Kent had a field day with that one. The trouble with being a group is that if one person messes up, everyone suffers. DS Kent drilled us for another half hour, marching us all around the center of camp. At least he took the time to explain the drills first this time, instead of expecting everyone to just know.

It took another twenty minutes to get us accustomed to our barracks. He assigned us each a rack, ordered us to stow our gear in the footlocker at the end and then pull some "rack time." Nobody asked what it meant.

It took me a long time to get to sleep that night. And when I woke up sometime later with a scream caught in my throat, knowing I'd had that nightmare again, there was no Soda in the next bed to calm me down.

* * *

A/N: I noticed a continuity error involving the names of Pony's barracks-mates. I fixed it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Std disclaimer: I don't own anything about The Outsiders (book or movie, characters, TV scripts, or anything else)**

* * *

After four more days of camp, my head became a mess of drill commands, work detail, and wishes for things I couldn't ever seem to get enough of…sleep and food. I wasn't the only one, either. Everybody sat down in the chow hall like they were speed drilling the Roster and ate in a "quick nine". Yeah. Nine minutes. And then you go up against the Roster afterward. A lot of guys puked the first few days, me included.

I started to understand that they were doing it on purpose, the drill sergeants. Nobody could finish a full meal in nine minutes, at least not at first. And if you were at the end of the line, you had more like five minutes. It got so you learned what food was the easiest to swallow without much chewing and you started with that.

We barely ate that first week, and most of us barely slept, too. Lights out was at ten-thirty each night, which most of us thought was pretty generous until reveille sounded at four in the morning. You get pretty short-tempered with that little of sleep, but you're too tired to do much about it. The guys even left Wade mostly alone after the first couple of days.

DS Kent continued to ride us, from morning inspection to the shortest hour of the day, rest, which was after p.m. chow. The only reason he left us alone during rest hour was because that's when he met with the other drill sergeants to plan out the next day's torture.

He didn't like Wade and he didn't like me. That by itself would have been enough to turn the other guys in the barracks against me, but I couldn't help stepping in on the third day of camp when our barracks got a brief introduction to KP duty. The tray returns are in the back of the kitchen, and the dishwasher back there is pretty isolated. Wade got stuck on dishes. I was just around the corner peeling about a million potatoes when Greg and Charlie wandered back there, grabbed Wade, and put him face first into the dirty dishwater. It was a little too close to close to a couple of socs holding me under in the fountain.

"Knock it off," I said loudly, and they paid me no mind. If they didn't let him up soon, he was gonna be in serious trouble. So I grabbed Charlie in a stranglehold and I threatened him with the potato peeler, wishing it was a knife. But I guess Greg realized it was sharp enough, because he let Wade go. And even though I didn't offer Wade any more help than that, it was enough to cross over that line I'd been dancing on. I was officially a target, just like skinny, wet Wade.

You might think I was exaggerating things with DS Kent, feeling picked on or singled out without cause. But with any new activity, you could expect him to put me or Wade through it first. When he posted the work details, most of ours were latrine (cleaning toilets) or fire watch. I figured it was pretty stupid to even have fire watch, seeing as how there wasn't anybody that was gonna get out of bed to make trouble and the camp was about a thousand miles from anywhere, but DS Kent just shouted about it being a necessity in any military installation. I wanted to grab him and shake him and tell him this _wasn't _a _real_ military installation. It was a stupid place where a bunch of hot-headed Marines who thought they were tuff barked orders at a bunch of JD's, trying to scare them straight. It occurred to me that this might be _their_ punishment for wrongdoing, and that we might all be at the mercy of a bunch of unstable misfits that the Marines couldn't figure out how to straighten out. It would sure explain a few things.

Anyway, you got so you could stumble through the day half-starved and half-asleep, because they were all the same: reveille, use the head, DDs (darkness drills, which was just a nice way of saying physical torture before sunup), a.m. shower, a.m. inspection, a.m. chow, a.m. work detail (usually a quick cleanup of the barracks, latrines, and the outside grounds), drill, the Roster, classes, mid-day chow, drill, a class, the Roster, afternoon work detail, drill, p.m. chow, drill, the Roster, p.m shower, rest (try to gather enough energy up to write a letter or just read one), lights out. Except if you're on fire watch, everyone else gets rack time and you get two hours of standing up on the Roster's top deck (you could see just about the whole camp from there) freezing your ass off in fifty degree weather with a pair of binoculars that you had no use for unless the moon was full. And _then_ you got rack time. I found out it is possible to sleep standing up, though it was a good thing there was no one there to push me.

Every night, at rest, I waited and hoped for a letter from home, even though I knew that mine probably only just got to Darry & Soda. A guy would never admit it to anyone, but mail call made it obvious that all of us were wishing we were just about anyplace else.

That night, at rest, DS Kent didn't head out after dropping the mail on Paul's rack like usual. While Paul handed out the sorry two letters that came in (one for Kurt, and one for Greg), Kent barked at us that our Rosters were pathetic, and Red Flag (the barracks were named for the colors of the flags we stood by that first day) was going to suit up and run through it until he was happy with the results. I wanted to drop right then, but there was no escaping it.

There are flood lights out at the Roster, so the fact that it was pitch black outside didn't matter. Of course, as always, DS Kent had me go first. While Kent prepped his stopwatch, Charlie, who was standing right behind me, pressed his fist hard into my back and hissed, "You mess this up, you better sleep with one eye open tonight."

I gave it everything, and not because I was all that afraid of Charlie. I just wanted to be left alone. The thought of missing any rack time kicking the four of them off me had me running, climbing, and jumping like my fatigues were on fire. Even Kent could find nothing to say about it.

Kent always had us wait up on deck for the rest of the guys to finish, so I got a bird's eye view of Charlie's run. Tires. Mud run. Up the rope. Back down. Under the wire field. Over the short wall. Over the second wall. Mud slush. Ascending bars. Descending bars. He slid on the final walk up, because he forgot to stomp off after the descending bars. Picture a bowling lane pulled up perpendicular to the ground and trying to walk it with your feet while pulling yourself up a rope. Yeah. Worked about as well for Charlie.

When he finally made it up, I asked quietly, "What was that you were saying?"

We both watched Wade scramble his way through. It was painful to watch. Charlie started screaming down at him almost before he even grabbed the rope. Nothing like having a second DS.

By the time Greg and Paul made it up, I knew Kent was gonna make us do it again, so I started down off the top deck even before Paul started on the bars. Surprisingly, though, Kent just barked at me to get my ass to the barracks and "rack it". I wondered if he expected us to take a third shower, but then I figured since our barracks was on laundry detail the next day, it didn't make a difference. But I stomped mud off all the way back, and I made sure to polish my boots before the rest could dry. It was a real pain to get off when it caked.

* * *

I was grabbed from a sound sleep by Charlie and the others some time later. Even if I'd had a watch, I wouldn't have been able to read it. They had something in my mouth and tape over it before I could even halfway get up. I kicked and twisted and fought, but they slugged me hard a couple of times, and I couldn't get enough air with that gag on.

Before they even got me halfway there, I knew where we were headed. The guys in Blue Flag were on fire watch, and Greg and Charlie were friendly with them, so I knew they wouldn't get ratted out. Paul and Kurt tied my hands and feet, put me in a harness, and hung me on a grappling hook. Then Greg and Charlie hauled me all the way to top deck, two stories up, and tied me off there, hanging in the breeze.

I shivered there for what felt like hours until almost dawn when the DS's from Green Flag and Black Flag saw me and ordered their guys to get me down. Once they did and got me untied, I bulleted past them to the nearest latrine. When I came out, DS Miller, head of Black Flag, sternly told me to follow him. Barefoot and freezing, I did. We went to back to Black Flag. The DS's quarters are off down a short hallway, separated from the grunt racks by a screened door. And they looked more like a hotel room, except not as fancy.

DS Miller told me to sit down, but I was still filthy, so I hesitated. He noticed my predicament and tossed me a spare blanket from inside his footlocker, and then he tossed me another one to put around me. He disappeared for a minute, and while I was waiting for him to come back, I fell asleep.

When I opened my eyes, the sun was up and looked to have been for about an hour. DS Miller was calmly flipping through pages on his clipboard. The drill sergeants are almost never without them. The table between us had a hot plate on it, and he had a kettle on it. He poured me a mug of hot water and handed me a packet of instant coffee.

"Private Curtis, eh?" He nodded to himself. "Read about you and your brothers."

"Jesus," I said, before I remembered who I was with. He didn't light into me the way DS Kent would have, though he shot me a look. I just finished stirring the coffee and said, "Do the drill sergeants swap files or something?"

He poured his own mug. "No. I'm an Okie," he said, stirring two packets into the mug. Guess he liked sludge. "Tulsa," he added, "Same as you."

We drank in silence as I defrosted, grateful for the short break from hell. But then he spoke again.

"Little friendly advice," DS Miller said, fiddling with the handle on his mug, "Don't get on Kent's bad side. There are a lot of foul-tempered, passed-over men running this joint. The ones that aren't bad yet are getting there fast. I've been on this session three years running, so I know what I'm talking about. I'm trying to build a case against this place, get it shut down. But it takes a lot of proof that I haven't got. The pitiful few guys that are still any good are too damn scared to rock the boat."

I just considered what he said. "Too late," I said finally. "DS Kent's already got it in for me. And Wade."

"Maybe," he agreed. After another lull, he said, "Kent's going to come here looking for you. I'll tell him what happened. He'll ask you who did it, but don't snitch. He'll see that as a weakness. Just suck it up and move on."

I nodded my agreement, and he tapped the table with his fingers and left me there as we both heard Kent enter Black Flag looking for him.

Sure enough, it happened just like Miller said. So I told Kent it was too dark out to see their faces, which was almost true. He gave me a pass to eat breakfast because if you don't show up at your barrack's chow time, you go without. And I had missed it by a half hour. Then he told me if I had a brain in my head, I'd be at the Roster at 0700 with the same sort of stuff I'd shown last night. After he left Black Flag, I stood up and started to fold the blankets, but DS Miller took them from me. He just looked at me, and I looked at him.

"Hustle, Private," he ordered, his voice cold and his eyes hard. I wondered then if I had dreamt the whole thing.


	3. Chapter 3

**Std disclaimer: I don't own anything about The Outsiders (book or movie, characters, TV scripts, or anything else)**

* * *

Charlie made sure to give me a pointed look when I jogged up to the Roster. But he was smart enough not to talk. Unlike the night before, which was unusual, DS Kent had us start one right after another. I hoped to pass Charlie before mud slush, just to prove that hanging me up on the Roster the night before didn't slow me down. We ended up in a dead heat on the perpendicular, though, so I felt like that was proof enough.

DS Kent, like the rest of the guys, had decided shortening my name to _Puny_ made it less of a mouthful. "Private Puny!" he called as I was cresting the top deck for the _second _time, "Again!"

That was all he had to say to ruin my day.

Turns out, what DS Kent had in mind was muscle failure. That's when, eventually, you just drop. You don't pass out, you don't puke. You just _can't_. And if you're smart, you sure hope it doesn't happen when you are halfway to top deck. But I discovered something worse. I lost it in mud slush, which is three feet of muddy water. If Kent hadn't ordered Kurt, who was just coming over the second wall, to fish me out, I'd have drowned there.

That's the thing about muscle failure. It lasts just long enough to get you killed, but not long enough to give you any real reprieve. My muscles started working just fine again, mostly, but not in time to keep me from halfway choking up a lung of dirty water. DS Kent yelled at me the whole time to get my sorry ass on the bars. He even came and stood right beside me to yell it in my face. For a second or two, I thought he was gonna have to shove me to get me moving, but he didn't. The screaming was enough to do it.

DS Kent didn't ask for a third. He just ordered me to barracks for laundry detail. As the rest of the guys finished their third runs, he sent them after. Paul made it in first, as I was already tied and shouldered (meaning, I had the flat sheet from my rack tied up around the rest of my personal laundry like a hobo's kit). I ducked out of the barracks before he could start anything. I sure wasn't in the mood, and if we were caught fighting, there would only be more muscle failures in store.

Anybody will tell you I don't talk much, even at home. But the quiet was even starting to get to me. I wanted more than anything to just be flopped out on that old broken sofa on our front porch next to Soda, yappin' his ears off. I hadn't laughed since I left Tulsa, and it never occurred to me how much I would miss it. Guess Two-Bit has it right, after all. And Darry. What I wouldn't give to have _him_ bossing me around instead of Kent. Glory, but you sure come to a better understanding of the way things are in a place like Rat City.

Laundry detail means you don't just do laundry for your own barracks. You pick up the laundry from _all_ the barracks. It takes about a half hour of walking back and forth just to get everything, and that's with all the guys pitching in. The laundry itself takes at least two hours, so the only good thing about it is you don't have drills or classes until you finish. The bad thing is, if you finish late, you miss mid-day chow. We finished late, because Greg and Charlie disappeared somewhere between the dry cycle and the put back. The only good thing about it was Paul and Kurt weren't too thrilled with them after that, and they didn't join in when Greg and Charlie hassled me and Wade after drill.

Instead of class, though, DS Kent put us in the lake. You'd think a chance to take a swim would be a good thing, but when your body feels like its on fire from the overexertion, the thought of sitting down in class for an hour and a half is like heaven. Instead, he had us lapping out to the float and back. I'm not sure exactly how far it is, but I've heard guys call it "two footballs".

I was hungry and jumpy, sure that the other guys were gonna start something up with me or with Wade. But I guess even they weren't up to it. DS Kent had messed with our normal routine so much that day already, switching the usual order of events around, that none of us even blinked when he called for drill again right after the lake. We should have been in some class or another. I _wanted_ to be in one class or another.

By the time we got to p.m. chow, I thought I'd pass out on my tray. The only thing that kept me awake was the deep gnawing pain of hunger. And when Greg leaned over my shoulder and calmly spit in my food, something just snapped.

It took the rest of our barracks to pull us apart. DS Kent shouting at us didn't even deter me. The only thing that did was when he got ahold of me and pulled my left arm up behind me so fast and so hard that my shoulder, the one that I'd dislocated in the tornado, popped out of place with the same blinding white flash as before. My tortured cry just made him meaner.

"What, Puny?" he shook me when I tried to free myself. I clenched my jaw, willing what little chow I'd had to stay down. "You can dish it out but you can't take it?" He let me go and I dropped like a stone to the chow hall floor.

"Sir," Wade said timidly, "something's wrong with his shoulder…"

DS Kent whipped around on him. "DID I tell you you could speak, Milksop?!" But he knelt down until his face was about three inches from mine and shouted, "GET on your feet, Puny!"

I struggled up, unable to move my left arm. The room spun dizzily, and a slick, greasiness curled in my gut.

"DON'T just stand there, Private! Walk your sorry ass to the infirmary, if you can find it!"

I wound up there, but once I got there, I didn't remember going. The staff nurse was a grim faced woman with straw-like hair and the bedside manner of a gallows hangman. She took one look at my arm just sort of hanging there, turned outward, and she snatched my shoulder and got it back in place before I could even take a breath. When my vision cleared, she snapped a sling around me, handed me two aspirin and a cup of water, and gave me a slip of paper to give to DS Kent. When I didn't stand up right away, she said,

"We're finished here, Private."

I looked at the paper as soon as I got out the door. _2DLD._ I wondered what it meant.

What it meant, which pissed Kent off to no end, was "two days light duty". And what that meant was no Roster and no work detail that required the use of both arms. In other words, it didn't mean all that much. There were plenty of ways to kill a guy, after all. Drill. Drill. More Drill. Latrine. You can, he pointed out, scrub a toilet using only one hand. You can pretty much do any work detail one-handed, as far as DS Kent is concerned.

That night, DS Kent pulled me from fire watch. I half thought he'd tell me you could climb the ladder to top deck with two legs and one arm, but I guess it didn't occur to him to make me try. But he handed me three huge binders and ordered me to deliver them to the Colonel's office before racking it, so I headed out doggedly, putting one foot in front of the other when all I wanted was to put them up.

Red Flag was the farthest barracks from the rest of camp, closest to the lake. I had to pass all the other barracks on my way to the HQ building. A three-quarter moon lit the way, but shadows were many. One of them spoke to me.

"Private, what are you doing out of your barracks?"

I didn't know whether to be relieved that it was DS Miller or not. But I stopped as he stepped in my path. I saw him look at my shoulder and the sling.

"That Kent's handiwork, Private?"

I nodded. "Yes, sir."

He sighed and muttered an oath. "Anybody else see him do it?"

"Whole barracks, sir," I replied quietly, matching his volume.

"Private Milsap as well?"

I nodded again. "Yes, sir."

He looked at me like he wanted to say something else. But he just stepped back, out of my way. "Carry on, Private."

* * *

My two days of light duty went fast, and by rest time, I was deeply dreading the next day's reveille. DS Kent had a gleam in his eye that I imagined was a pleasant anticipation of my return to unrestricted duty.

When Paul tossed an envelope at my chest, I nearly leapt off my rack. I'd halfway started to believe I would never see or hear from my brothers again, and I'd started to numb off inside. There was no point to longing if it just brought on more hell. But this. This was proof that they were out there somewhere and that I would see them again if I could just hold on.

* * *

June 26, 1967

Hey, Pony!

Good to hear from you already! Darry's still talking bout that trip. Postman delivered a big envelope today and it was full of pictures that guy from the newspaper took. He's looked at them bout a million times. Tim got some too and he came in the door yelling for you. Hemmingway! he says. He forgot you weren't here.

Sorry bout your hair but its just hair and its gonna grow back. Hey last week Two-Bit got jumped. It was pretty bad. Almost as bad as Johnny that time. He was just getting home from the Ace and five socs cornered him in the alley off Greeley and Sutton. It was bad enough that Darry had him stay with us a couple of days so he wouldn't upset his mom. Busted up his ribs pretty good though so he's getting around bout like you did when your back was all cut up.

Its too quiet around here. Darry and I have started hanging around the Ace after work just so we don't have to go home and you aren't there. He would write something in here but he's got his usual summer cold like he gets every summer and he's already asleep even though it is only seven.

I'm not as good at letters as you but I hope that your ok. Write soon.

Sodapop

* * *

I read it three times and fell asleep with it still in my hand.

* * *

A/N: I'm sure you've guessed, but the mistakes in Soda's letter are intentional. I never realized how tough it is to make mistakes on purpose. Not that I am perfect by any means! :)


	4. Chapter 4

**Std disclaimer: I don't own anything about The Outsiders (book or movie, characters, TV scripts, or anything else)**

* * *

Two days of light duty weren't enough. That was made obvious right from the DDs. My shoulder screamed in protest, but still I worked it, trying not to make faces since DS Kent was standing almost on top of me, shouting out a long stream of his usual abuse.

"You call that a push up, Puny?!" He stepped on my back. Not enough to pin me, but enough to accelerate the muscle failure, seeing as how I was about a quarter inch to the ground, needing to push up but unable to lift both myself and his boot. So I hovered there, my arms on fire, sweating furiously. It felt like the world stopped except for me. I knew if I touched the dirt he'd be on my ass for the rest of the day. He'd been waiting for it. Probably felt the way kids do when school lets out for the summer. "Private, if you don't rise up in the next three seconds, you'll be doing push ups through a.m. detail! Lift that sorry ass!"

I sucked in a breath and shoved hard, though it felt like the muscles in my arms were tearing off the bones. You can't imagine the satisfaction I got when it threw him off balance and he stumbled and had to catch himself. But it got the job done. He moved on to hassle Paul on his form.

I waited with every muscle tensed for Greg or Charlie to pull that chow spitting routine again. They glowered at me, but neither of them moved on me. Didn't stop Greg from snatching the plate off Wade's tray, right out from under his fork, and adding it equally to his and Charlie's chow. Wade just got up and took his tray to the dish line, which pissed me off. I didn't want to get involved. It was none of my business. Wade was never going to be helpful in a fight, so if I took them on, I'd be doing it alone.

In the end, though I didn't feel too hot about it, I just followed Wade back to the barracks to get a jump on a.m. detail. On my way to the latrine (because of course I was on latrine) I caught sight of something, just a quick flash, under Greg's rack. I figured we had a couple minutes on them at least, so I ducked down to find out what it was.

Now, being that Rat City boasted a military-run program, we were issued genuine dog tags with our uniforms. Since they never leave our necks, most of us guys keep the keys to our footlockers on them. Not Greg. His was tucked over one of the metal slats on the frame of his rack, under the mattress. I grinned.

He'd gotten a small package two nights ago at rest. He'd peeked carefully inside like it held the hope diamond or something, and he didn't even show Charlie, Paul, or Kurt the contents. I was surprised to find a switchblade inside. If we got packages, they were already opened up by the DSs specifically for that reason. They wouldn't let us have guns here, so it was no surprise they checked for anything else that might be considered a weapon. The pencils they gave us to write letters with were tiny stubs too small to wield. In the chow hall, our utensils were plastic. I couldn't figure how it would get past DS Kent, so I realized he must already know about it. That sent a chill down my spine.

Along with the blade were two sticks of Slim Jim and a Snickers bar. I grinned again. Looked like Wade was gonna get a little more chow, after all.

He was already busy in the latrine, scrubbing away in one of the two stalls. When he noticed a shadow behind him he whipped around. When he saw it was me, he just whipped back around and kept cleaning.

"Here, Wade," I said, and handed him a Slim Jim. Then I looked around the latrine for someplace to hide the rest. Putting it in my footlocker would pretty much be putting a nail in my own coffin, and I couldn't ask Wade to hide it, either.

Wade might be a lot of things, but he ain't stupid. He tore into that packet and began to chew frantically, watching the door. He was practically shaking, but he wasn't about to turn down food. He didn't ask where it came from, and I didn't tell him. His eyes flashed at the sight of that package in my hands, so I knew he knew. What I didn't expect was for him to nod upward and say,

"Ceiling."

I looked up. Of course. Why hadn't I thought of it?

I thought I heard the screen door at the far end of the barracks bang open, so I hopped up on the commode in a flash, popping up the acoustic tile with my hand. Perfect. The package was not so heavy that it affected the tiles in any way. I was back off that commode and scrubbing it by the time Kurt, whose rack is closest to the latrine, started sweeping the barracks floor.

It was sort of nice to have something different to think about all day, even if thinking about it filled me with dread. I was pretty sure Greg would realize that the only people with any opportunity were me and Wade, seeing as how we got a jumpstart on a.m. detail and were alone in the barracks. But even so, through drill, the Roster, classes, and details I could only imagine with a deep, deep satisfaction the look that was gonna cross his face when he found that package gone.

Nothing could really get to me that day, not even Kent's usual hammering. I just did what he said with my yes, sirs and my no, sirs and gave him no cause to add to my torture. Of course, that didn't stop him from finding faults, anyway. But it never did.

We swam again, and this time, he had us hit the float four times instead of three, and that was because I stopped for about a half second when my left arm just couldn't stroke anymore. Then he didn't let me dress after. He had me drill in just my dripping trunks, socks, and boots, which made me feel real good. All the other Flags were on various work details, except Blue Flag, which was also drilling nearby. You aren't supposed to talk unless the DS calls REST in formation, but I definitely heard murmuring and a lot of sneering, under-breath laughter.

_Just like breaking horses, _I thought, annoyed at the shame I felt. It meant I was doing exactly what they wanted, giving them exactly what they wanted. I wanted to march half naked and not give a damn because then I'd know they hadn't ruined me. But we were all ruined now, in one way or another. We'd been hoods and troublemakers before, and some of us still were now. But we were ruined in other ways, growing incapable of free thought, free will. Free anything. There'd be no life without constant fear, constant dread. And I hate them for that.

* * *

It didn't take long for Greg to miss his stuff. What he bitched about was the food, because that's all he was willing to let us know he had. But the funny thing was, instead of considering Wade and me, he pulled Paul clean off his feet and pinned him in the aisle between our racks.

"What did you do with it?" he cried, hands around Paul's neck. He only eased up a little when he realized Paul couldn't answer without air.

"Get the fuck off me, Cicarello!" That was all Paul said, bucking under him. Greg's no small guy. He's no Darry, but he's no Johnny, either.

"WHERE is it?" Greg asked again, grabbing Paul's hair with one hand, pulling his head up and smacking it back down on the concrete. I doubted Paul could even think after the sick _thud _that echoed in the barracks. It was completely silent except for the sounds of Greg's enraged breathing and Paul's terrified gasping.

"Dammit, I don't know!" Paul cried when Greg let up on his throat for another second.

"You're the only one that knows where that key is!"

Shit. I knew if I didn't say anything, he'd probably kill Paul. Paul couldn't tell him what Paul didn't know, and Greg was clearly not going to let up until Paul told him something. I was surprised when it was Kurt who came to stand over them and said,

"We ain't stupid, Cicarello. _Everybody _knows you hide your damn key under your rack. Serves you right if someone got into your locker." And then I could swear Kurt looked at me, though I might have been imagining it. "Brown Flag was on laundry detail today. Maybe you should head over there and ask those guys."

Greg kept up choking Paul for another few moments, but then he let him go and grabbed the key to his footlocker from under his rack and added it to his tags with a few furious movements. He didn't talk to anybody for the rest of the night, and he didn't apologize to Paul.

After all the commotion, the barracks grew real quiet again, so I dashed a quick letter off to Darry and Soda.

* * *

_June 29, 1967_

_Dear Darry and Sodapop,_

_Hard to believe it isn't even July yet. August 25__th__ seems like a million years from now._

_I can't even begin to explain what it is like here. They work you from before dawn to after dusk, and then they work you some more. I tell you, the thing I want most is to sit on the porch and just do __nothing__. Here, every minute of the day is packed with something, right up until rest, which is a one hour period where you take care of any personal details like prepping your gear for the next day, polishing your boots, or whatever. If there's time you get to write a quick letter. Like this one._

_I know what you meant about the hard cases, now, Soda. I made the mistake of stepping in when the guys got too tough on Wade. He's that little guy I told you about, remember? Anyway, that made it the rest of the barracks against me and Wade, which really makes it four to one. Wade is pretty useless in a fight. But there isn't a lot of time for them to take any real action, so don't worry. The drill sergeant sure doesn't like me much, either, but there's nothing I can do about that._

_I want a Pepsi so bad I'd crawl through ten miles of wire field for a bottle. They don't let us have anything but water, orange juice, and milk here. And I'd sure like some chocolate cake. Too bad it wouldn't make the trip, or I'd ask you to mail me a piece. _

_At first things were the same every day, all of the activities in the same order. But now I don't know what the hell I'm doing until about two seconds before I'm doing it. Classes are starting to get more interesting, though. First aid. Field communications. Over the fourth of July, our barracks is going on an overnight hike to test whether we've learned anything about outdoor survival. Anything different is good._

_Work details are getting more interesting, too. Now on top of the basic chores like laundry and KP they've got us learning a little radio communications, a little surveillance, and a little Jeep maintenance. By the time I get home I'll be a regular Jack Handy. Not sure where any of it except the Jeep stuff will be useful outside of camp, though._

_Shoot. That's the warning for lights out. Gotta go. Write soon._

_Ponyboy_

* * *

The next morning, right after a.m. chow, there was a special all-camp meeting in the quad, where we usually run drill formations. DS Kent barked at us to put on our dress blues and be on the quad by 0800.

Colonel Messner, who'd been sort of a background presence, stood on a little platform that had been specially set up, behind a scarred podium. A couple guys from Blue Flag worked a sound system from the back. Everyone else was in formation, at attention. His first words, though, were "At Ease", which meant we couldn't talk but didn't have to stand arrow straight. Officially, you are supposed to widen your stance and clasp your hands behind your back. Unofficially, as long as your right foot doesn't leave the ground, you can stand pretty much however you want. But I noticed everyone stood officially just the same. Better safe than DS sorry.

"Privates, you are all called here today because, unexpectedly, we have a few grunts who are performing well enough to have met the RCJMC standards for promotion to Private First Class. If you've been attentive in your classes, you know that the RCJMC ranking system is an abbreviated version of the Marine JROTC standards used in high schools across the country. We have compressed the requirements to suit a nine week session, making it possible for you to reach the RCJMC's highest enlisted ranking of Corporal."

Despite being at ease, a murmur rippled though the ranks. We were surprised that anyone would get promoted at all, much less so soon, with all of July and most of August still ahead. If you want to know the truth, I didn't think anyone would ever cut the mustard. I thought it would just be a dangling carrot for the entire nine weeks for guys dumb enough to buy into it.

"Along with a promotion to Private First Class comes additional privilege and additional responsibility. Unless he is outranked, a Private First Class is first to shower, and he is served first during his barracks' session in the chow hall. A Private First Class is not required to perform p.m. drill. Instead, he will use that time to perform his additional duties, as assigned by his drill sergeant." The Colonel squinted out at us and let his words set in before continuing. "A Private First Class also becomes the second team leader of his barracks, until or unless another of his team is promoted beyond him. A Private First Class becomes responsible for the rest of his team. If they are punished, he is punished harder. If they fail, it is his failure, and he, like his drill sergeant, is responsible for resolving those failures."

I wasn't sure I liked the sound of that. I sure didn't need another Kent riding me. I hoped with everything in me that ours was not a barracks with a promotion in store.

The Colonel went on to advise that when he called out the names of the promoted, those guys were to march to the right side of the podium. I wondered if he meant his right or our right.

"From Black Flag, Private Anthony Clark." The Colonel watched a tall kid with sandy blonde hair march toward the platform.

Black Flag forgot we weren't at rest and said "OORAH!"

"Oorah" means a lot of things. Yes. Amen. I heard you. The only thing it doesn't mean is "no". But since it usually means something good, I've never heard anyone in our barracks say it. Matter of fact, I've only heard it used by the guys in Black Flag, DS Miller's barracks.

Private First Class Clark saluted the Colonel as required, and the Colonel shook his hand and advised him to add the PFC insignia to his dress blues before the end of the following week. "Oorah, Sir," he said, and it got picked up by the microphone on the podium, setting off another oorah, this time from most of the barracks. The Colonel said nothing, but DS Kent made sure to shout, "Company, YOU are not at rest!"

That silenced the crowd pretty quick.

PFC Clark stood at ease on the left side of the podium now. Our left. He'd taken the platform on our right.

"From Gray Flag, Private Benjamin Tanner."

More oorahs, except from our barracks. The other DSs didn't correct their guys. They joined in. It made me wonder if Kent was the meanest in Rat City, if we'd all just had the bum luck to get the worst possible DS. Miller wasn't so bad, after all. He could be hard. But he could be human, too, like when I'd been lowered from top deck.

"And lastly, from Red Flag, Private Ponyboy Curtis."

I snapped to attention. What? I marched to the platform, wondering what the hell was happening. Why? How? I saluted Colonel Messner, and I shook his hand. I accepted the insignia and his repeated instructions to update my blues. And then I stood at ease, trying to listen as he droned on about achievement and endurance and duty to God, to country, and to self. He released the Flags back to their DSs after telling us that going forward, there would be a dress blues promotion ceremony each Sunday morning instead of a.m. work detail. I wondered what would happen if no one made promotion. Then I decided I didn't want to know.

I didn't get it. DS Kent hated me. This wasn't one of those "work him hard because he's got something" stories. That junk was just TV. Why would he promote me? What purpose would it serve? I tried to figure out the many ways that it would come back to haunt me. Some were obvious. He could punish me double, for my own shortcomings and for everyone else's. And it sure wouldn't help my position any with the other guys.

So that was it. He'd found a new way to dig at me, to get to me, to break me. He'd seen me adapt to his punishments, withstand his tortures. So he'd found a way to up the stakes.

Oorah.


	5. Chapter 5

**Std disclaimer: I don't own anything about The Outsiders (book or movie, characters, TV scripts, or anything else)**

* * *

After Greg nearly strangled Paul the night before, things had changed. It was no longer Greg, Charlie, Paul, and Kurt against Wade and me. It was Greg and Charlie against Paul and Kurt, and it was Greg and Charlie against Wade and me. In other words, Paul and Kurt did not automatically align themselves with Wade and me.

In fact, Wade didn't even align himself with me. He watched me with the same suspicion as the rest of them, though not with the hatred the others held. I was glad to spend part of that day in special classes with the other PFCs, except that it meant I was going to have to start using that knowledge.

I wasn't interested in hollering at people, at standing in their faces and screaming obscenities. I wasn't interested in being in charge, in handing out punishments, or in playing mind games. And now I had to, according to everything they were telling us. I half wanted to just ignore my new duties until one of the others outranked me. The only thing that kept me from trying that was the thought of it being Greg or Charlie making Lance Corporal, which was the next step up from a PFC.

DS Kent pounded it home on the Roster. Just when you get so you can do something reasonably well, that's when it gets taken away or changed. Kent almost had us where he wanted us to be on the Roster, so his first barking words when we formed our usual line at the foot of it were, "You grunts will NOT start here today! You will start from top deck and you will END here!" And then he shouted, "Private First Class Puny, YOU will show them how it is done, and it BETTER be good!"

So instead of walk up, I rappelled down the wall, moved to the bars, and hit the mud slush. My muscles had no memory of this, and it was odd and awkward, even though it was only the same thing I'd been doing in the reverse. I knew before I reached the others, who had not yet been sent top deck, that DS Kent was not satisfied and that I'd be doing it again.

"PUNY!" he shouted. "HOW the hell did you MAKE Private First Class? WHAT kind of sissified hippie's kid makes Private First Class?"

I wanted to shout back that _he'd _promoted me, so he should know. Instead, I just told him what he wanted to hear. "Sir, I don't know, sir!"

"You're damn RIGHT you don't know! SO you're going to do it again until you DO know!!"

But this time, he sent the others through behind me. I was glad when it looked like they weren't doing any better at it than I was. When I finished the second run, DS Kent sent me for a third, and then a fourth. Muscle failure wasn't far behind, but he stopped at four. I stood a few feet away from him, trying to catch my breath, when he shouted,

"DID I say you could rest?!"

So I started back for top deck. That wasn't what he wanted, though. Not this time.

"Private First Class Puny, WHAT are your new duties on this team?!"

"Sir, to lead the team, sir!" I answered.

"And DO you think that this team is performing as it should?!"

I hated to answer. I felt like I was stabbing every one of them in the back. I shouldn't care. They'd gleefully plunge a knife in me first chance they got. They would have, anyway, even before I was promoted. But when I didn't immediately answer, Kent hollered at me again.

"Sir, no, sir!"

"And WHAT is your job in that instance?"

"Sir, to motivate, sir!"

It had begun to drizzle, a slow but steady leaking from the sky that promised to continue all day. It was sticky but cool, and my legs were cold from the mud slush. My hands were raw and burning from the quadruple descent from top deck (a rope sliding through glove-less hands will do that), my body ached, and my lungs still burned. I felt like doing anything but motivating anyone.

But he had me. Kent had me right where he wanted me. He hated me. He'd seen the rift that had started to form in our barracks. He'd seen the potential for Paul and Kurt to form new alliances, possibly with me. It was the last thing he wanted. He loved to divide and conquer. He loved dissention in the ranks. He did not actually want a tight barracks that worked together to accomplish a goal. He wanted us fighting like dogs. We were his bloodsport. He didn't care who won so long as someone lost and lost good.

So I ran alongside them as they struggled through the second pass, shouting at them to move their sorry asses. Ordering Greg to quit flailing on the bars, asking Charlie if his pants were full of cement, and screaming at Wade to get over the damn wall. I felt like washing my own mouth out with soap.

The looks that passed between us as Greg and Charlie headed back to top deck for a third put a chill down my back. Oh, I was gonna pay for this later. If they could find a way to get at me and not get caught, I was gonna pay.

Messing with someone that outranked you would get you punished in ways you'd never dreamed of. We'd learned that on day two of camp when Greg lost it and screamed back at DS Kent. Kent had dragged him off behind HQ, and when Kent came back, he was alone. And when Greg rejoined us for p.m. drill, he'd been limping slightly.

I'm not sure anyone knew what had actually happened. But Greg had never sounded off like that again, and no one else in our barracks tried it, either. After lights out, we all pretended we didn't hear him sniffling in the dark.

I knew that if they wanted to get even, they'd have to be creative about it, and that meant their only real chance was after lights out. If I fell asleep, it was open season. I wished for the first time that I could be on fire watch. If they fell asleep first, I'd probably be safe. Probably.

So they didn't mess with me. It should have been a nice break, but it wasn't. Not with wondering when the other shoe would drop. I ate and no one interrupted my meal. I pulled my PFC duties after chow, which consisted of making out the schedule for work details and transferring DS Kent's hastily scribbled time logs into a legible form that had to go to HQ. Basically, I pushed paper for an hour. The only good thing about it was I got to sit down for some of it. On the down side, if you are tired, sitting down is a bad idea. Getting caught nodding off over paperwork wasn't going to get me covered in an afghan here.

At rest, I dashed off another letter to Darry and Soda, even though they hadn't had time to write me back yet.

* * *

_July 1, 1967_

_Dear Darry & Soda,_

_Just thought I'd tell you that I got promoted to Private First Class (PFC). Before you get too excited, I should tell you it isn't much of a good thing. Just a new way to get on everyone's bad side. You ain't gonna be too happy with a guy when he's screaming in your face. And since screaming in faces is part of my job now, or else I get punished, well, you can figure I'm not gonna win any popularity contests._

_Since I am the first PFC in our barracks, I am considered to be in charge, which makes the other guys none too happy. I'll be sleeping with one eye open from here on out, I guess. At least until someone else gets promoted past me. I'm not sure I really want that, either. I don't need two DSs. One is enough. More than enough. And paybacks, well…you know._

_Anyway, we'll be heading out on the overnight on July 4__th__. Ten mile hike toward the Stovepipe, which is a red rock formation that looks just like it sounds. We'll camp at the base of the Pipe and head back to camp the next morning. We'll have water but no food. The point, of course, is for us to locate our own. We don't have guns here, though, so I ain't sure just how that's gonna work. Fishing gear, maybe. Plants, probably._

_Gotta go. It'll be lights out soon, and I've gotta prep my gear for tomorrow._

_Write soon, y'all._

_Ponyboy_

* * *

I didn't sleep for a good half the night, wondering if anyone was going to try to get even with me. I was glad to have a wall behind me so that I could only be attacked from the right side of my rack, or the end of it past the footlocker. After what seemed like hours, I fell asleep feeling like a sucker, wondering if this was exactly (and all) they had planned.


	6. Chapter 6

**Std disclaimer: I don't own anything about The Outsiders (book or movie, characters, TV scripts, or anything else)**

**

* * *

**

On July 3rd, Private Eric Greensboro vanished from Gray Flag. He was discovered missing at reveille. Even though we didn't have many opportunities to talk, rumors got around. He'd been kidnapped by members of his barracks. He'd been taken by the guys from Brown Flag, which had a deep rivalry with Gray Flag. No one could find him, though. He wasn't hanging from the Roster. He wasn't in the infirmary. He wasn't anywhere.

When we got out of our racks at reveille, DS Kent ordered us to gear up for a field search and to be in the quad at 0500. By the time we got there, Private Greensboro was also there. He wobbled on his feet. He was bloodied and bruised and his fatigues were torn. He stared at the ground as his drill sergeant, DS Monahan, spit in his face. He was a disgrace. He was a coward. He was slime. He'd gone AWOL and had made it as far as the highway eight miles southwest of camp before being picked up by two of the staff sergeants that worked in HQ with the Colonel.

I didn't figure he'd come to look the way he did just walking to the highway. That had been courtesy of, most likely, his DS. He was on display for a reason. _Don't try this, _was the warning. _Understand the consequences. _

We grunts had him to thank for the cancellation of the upcoming overnights. Some guys were probably relieved. I was miserable. Different was good. And now different was gone. We also had him to thank for three hours of muscle failures in the quad. One for all, and all for one.

I didn't really understand the point of escape. If Private Greensboro had been sent here by the courts, like me, he had to finish. But maybe he didn't have guys like Darry and Soda to go back to. Maybe he didn't care if they took him out of his home. Maybe that was the point. Or maybe he was a paid enrollment, like Wade Milsap. Maybe his folks just wanted someone else to teach their son values and thought he'd get them here, in Rat City. Maybe he'd had enough and thought anything else would be better.

I'd thought about it, too. Wondered if you could just walk on out the gates in the middle of the night. But as bad as it was, never seeing my brothers again would be worse. As much as I wanted to be back in our house, wrestling with Soda or Two-Bit on the living room floor with Mickey Mouse screeching in the background, I knew I'd never get there any other way but to just get through it. Some days I wanted to curl up into a ball and moan, I was so homesick. But mostly I just turned it off, numbed it up, and did what needed doing. No matter how slowly, time passes. The clock _would _run out.

It turned into open season on Private Greensboro. He ended up getting his wish. Somehow, someone stabbed him with a shoehorn that had been fashioned into a knife. A _shiv. _He was taken out by ambulance. All because he just didn't want to be here anymore. It made me think of Greg's switchblade. Guess it didn't really matter that I'd hidden it, if a guy could nearly be killed by a shoehorn.

* * *

The guys in my barracks were quiet, subdued. DS Kent still yelled himself blue at us, and we just doggedly kept on going. Nobody picked any fights that day, nobody promised retribution when a mistake was made and Kent forced us to work that much harder. Nobody even blinked when I yelled at them to move faster or tighter. We just went through the motions until rest, and then we silently geared up for the next day.

There was no mail. It seemed like even the outside world had forgotten us. Paul and Kurt played Blackjack on Paul's rack. I thought of how Soda and Steve might be doing the same thing. Steve would be trying to pull an ace out from his sock but Soda would catch him and launch himself over the coffee table to tackle him. Greg and Charlie wrote letters. I wished I had one to read. Wade read a book. I hadn't touched the ones Darry had given me. I just wasn't in the mood, though it would let me escape for a while. I wished desperately for Sodapop, to be across from him on my bed at home, just talking about nothing in the dark as we drifted off to sleep.

* * *

Tulsa, OK

When I saw Ponyboy's letter in the mail, the crummy day I'd had at the DX just dropped away. Seems like a lot of days have felt crummy since he left for that camp, but it took Steve snapping at me today about it to make me notice. Funny how you don't really think about it at the time, but when someone isn't around, you notice things aren't as fun or as funny. Knowing Pony'd be back the end of next month wasn't doing much to cheer me up to my usual self. I didn't like being in a crummy mood. And I especially didn't like Steve pointing out to me how I wasn't any fun lately. Good thing it doesn't happen too often.

"Hey, Darry!" I called, seeing his truck was parked out front. "Letter from Pony!"

He got out of the armchair like someone lit it on fire. He tries to pretend like he's just fine about Pony being gone, but he misses the kid like crazy. He comes over to the DX and says hey after work if I'm still there, which he didn't really do before. And then he goes next door to the Ace to wait for me to get off. I guess he doesn't know what to do with himself without Pony around to look after. And he looks at those pictures from his trip all the time, and I know he's thinking about Pony. He can't wait for him to see those pictures, for one thing.

Darry grabbed another beer and used the edge of the counter to pop the top off, even though the laminate has chipped off from him doing that over and over. Then he dropped the pan of cake on the table between us with two forks. We took turns grabbing a forkful of cake, and then I swallowed mine and started reading.

"Dear Darry & Sodapop, Hard to believe it isn't even July yet…"

Darry hung on every word. The world Ponyboy described in his letters was like nothing I could ever imagine. It sounded tuff. That Roster thing…I'd love to have a crack at that. Challenge Steve to a race. Bet I'd win. Steve would never let me tell anyone, but he doesn't like heights much.

"…Shoot. That's the warning for lights out. Gotta go. Write soon. Ponyboy," I finished.

Darry just ate another forkful. His face was all closed up. I can usually guess what he's thinking, but this time I didn't know. So I said,

"Poor Pony, he's homesick." I frowned. I wanted to be at that camp about as much as Pony didn't. I wished Pony would see it my way…something new. An adventure. But all he saw was the stuff that _wasn't_ there. I guessed I couldn't blame him. I'd probably miss him and Darry a lot, if it were me. But that Roster…that was like a jungle gym for grown ups, and back in school, that was my favorite part of the day. Recess.

"Soda?" Darry was asking. He smirked at me when he realized I'd been off in another place. "Look, Soda," he said, and I had a feeling he was repeating himself, "Pony's doing ok. He could stand to do a little growing up. Sounds like that place is good for him."

"Hope those guys don't give him too much trouble," I said, wondering if Pony was being straight with us. A couple of guys in the neighborhood had brothers or cousins that had been there, or to someplace similar, and the stories they told me would worry another year or two off Darry. So I didn't tell him, because it would only make him crazy. And he already wasn't sleeping good at night. I wished again that I could switch places with Pony for a day or two. See what it was like. And if anybody gave me trouble, I'd whup them clean. But it would really be tough it Steve or Two-Bit was there with me.

"You read the letter," Darry shrugged. "Sounds like everything's under control."

"I know," I complained. "But if you were Pony, and you were stuck there and you had to finish or else go to a boy's home, would you tell anyone if things _weren't _okay?"

I could tell that Darry didn't expect that sort of question out of me. Hell, I love a good time as much as anybody, but some things you don't joke about. You can't. And I knew Pony, even if Darry didn't. There was something about those letters. He wasn't telling us everything. I'd bet my calfskin boots on it. But that was as much worry as I wanted to give Darry, so I let it drop.

Darry finished his cake, and then he said maybe we should put some candy in our next letter. We couldn't put a Pepsi in it because the camp rules said you couldn't send anything sharp or anything that could be made into something sharp. I told myself to remember to buy Pony a whole six pack before he got home. Darry doesn't buy it much because he wants Pony drinking milk and not Pepsi. But Darry wouldn't argue.

"We should write him back," Darry said. "Maybe we can get him a letter before he leaves on that overnight."

I nodded. Good idea. That way, maybe Pony would cheer up in time for the trip. That'd be tuff. That trip sounded like fun, but Ponyboy wouldn't enjoy it if he stayed too homesick.

* * *

_**July 1, 1967**_

_**Pony,**_

_**Sorry I haven't written you sooner. Soda told you I got sick, huh? Guess all the excitement of that trip got to me. The pictures are really great. Soda says that looking at them, he feels like he was there with us. Hopefully, it will feel like that for you, too.**_

_**Soda's going to have a fit if I don't let him take over, so I'm going to let him. Just remember that August 25**__**th**__** is just around the corner. It will be here before you know it. Stay out of trouble. You'll be okay.**_

_**Darry**_

_Sheesh. I wasn't gonna have a fit. It's me now. Soda. I miss you a bunch. I hate that you aren't in our room at night to talk to. I hope you aren't having bad dreams. Darry can't sleep good. He misses you too. Steve's mad at me he says I'm not any fun anymore since you are gone. I guess he's right a little. Not a lot. But I go to tell you something and then I remmember you aren't there to tell it to. I wish they'd let you call home. _

_I was just thinking about how I'd like to try that Roster thing it sounds like fun. You and me and Steve and Two-Bit could race each other. That would be lots of fun. _

_If things were real bad there you would tell me right? Darry thinks you are okay. I think probly you aren't as okay as you act like you are. _

_Darry said we should put some candy in. Hope it makes the trip okay. That would be funny if we tried chocolate cake except I don't think you could even read this if we did._

_Love ya. Soda_

* * *

A/N: I never realized how hard it would be to write from Soda's point of view! I may have to forget about writing from Darry's altogether, although I had planned to at a couple of points. YIKES.


	7. Chapter 7

**

* * *

**

Std disclaimer: I don't own anything about The Outsiders (book or movie, characters, TV scripts, or anything else)

**

* * *

**

So, the fourth of July came and went. I thought about the overnight trip we didn't take for several days afterward. DS Kent worked us hard. I wasn't sure if he worked us harder than usual, or if it just felt harder because of my mood. Numbing myself off wasn't working so well anymore. I thought of home with a vengeance. I made lists in my head of all the things I wanted when I got there. Most of them were related to food or sleep or doing nothing, but I also wanted to go to the movies something awful.

I started reading one of the Louis L'Amours during rest. It was good to get away. I got a package from Darry and Soda on the fifth of July, though. The outside was a little battered, so I figured it had been held up at the post office, jammed in a machine or something. There was a pack of m&ms inside, which brought tears to my eyes. I risked turning my back to the barracks and facing the wall so they wouldn't see.

I wrote them back as I let those little bits of chocolate melt under my tongue.

* * *

_July 5, 1967_

_Darry & Soda,_

_Got your package today. Thanks! I'm sucking on m&ms right now, and boy, is that good. I've really missed chocolate. We sometimes get desserts here at chow, but never chocolate._

_A guy went AWOL, so they cancelled the overnight and put us on lockdown. I was looking forward to it, you know, for something different. Now it is just more of the same._

_I want to see those pictures, Darry. I'd ask you to mail me a few here, but I would hate it if something happened to them. Guess it will have to wait until next month._

_Soda, you really would get a kick out of this place for a little while, but it gets old fast. The Roster might have been fun the first time we went through it. Or maybe the third or fourth when we got better at it. But after several trips through your body just hurts and you don't want to do it anymore and you hate it worse than anything. _

_I'm okay, though. Don't worry. Just wishin' I was home is all. The guys here aren't much different than guys back home. Socs in uniform. Except you don't know whether they've got money or not. But they enjoy hassling me. Only difference is they don't get too many chances to make any real trouble. And the fact that I outrank them for now makes it even tougher for them to find ways to harass me, because if you get smart with or you lay a hand on someone who outranks you…well, you'll be sorry._

_As usual, it is time for lights out all too soon. I wish I could call home, too. It'd be nice to hear you guys._

_Ponyboy_

* * *

The next morning, I no sooner showered and dressed after DDs than DS Kent was shouting for me. He stood just outside the door to Red Flag, and he was all fired up about something. The guys were at attention nearby, and I realized Greg and Charlie weren't with them just as DS Kent got in my face and hollered,

"Puny, you call yourself a Private First Class?! You call yourself a LEADER? Where are your men, LEADER?"

I wanted to shout back that I didn't call myself anything. _He_ called me a leader. I still wanted to rub it in his face that he was the one to promote me, so he should be the one to suffer when I didn't meet the crazy standards he had in mind. But all I said was, "Sir, I don't know, sir. They were present at reveille and for DDs, sir."

"WELLLLL," he drawled, "I'll tell you what, PUNY! Every hour that you _don't _find them is a meal you don't eat. Every hour that it takes for your pathetic ass to find them is an hour you spend in full gear on the Roster while the rest of us pull up lawn chairs and watch you suffer!"

You don't want to spend _any_ time on the Roster in full gear. That means you have to wear your regular fatigues including the camo jacket that none of us typically needs unless we're on fire watch, _plus_ fifty pounds of gear. We were told we had it easy, because actual Marines carry more like a hundred to a hundred thirty pounds in combat. DS Kent had put us through the Roster in full gear only twice, and let me tell you, I only thought I knew muscle failure until that moment.

The rest of the barracks went about their usual routine, and I stayed behind to find Greg and Charlie. I checked the detail sheets hanging just inside our barracks' door. Sometimes DS Kent would change them without telling us and catch a guy not paying attention. We were required to check them every time we set foot in the barracks, and that was how he knew if someone wasn't…he'd change around the work details or he'd put in a special assignment.

But there was nothing. Greg and Charlie were supposed to be with everyone else. I methodically checked each Flag, one by one. Nothing. I checked the west classrooms and the east classrooms. Nothing again. I checked every supply or cleaning station, I checked the chow hall, and I checked the infirmary. And hour passed. I felt my heart ticking just a little harder with each passing minute.

I checked with the gate guards, who'd been put in place after the Greensboro incident, and I tracked down Private Evans in Brown Flag, who had been the last on fire watch. Nothing. I poked my head into the HQ. Greg and Charlie weren't in the tiny reception area, and the receptionist said she'd just gotten in, herself, but that all the HQ staff had been on a conference call for the last two hours. On my way out the door, I checked the clock. I'd killed another hour, thanks to Brown Flag not being where they were supposed to be. Their details had said they'd be in the west classrooms, but instead I found them on the lake.

Panic was creeping into the edges, but I didn't want to let it take hold. It wouldn't help me figure out where they were any faster, and I didn't want to give Kent the satisfaction. I passed Black Flag on my way from the lake to the Roster, where my barracks was supposed to be. DS Miller told his PFC to start the formations, and he asked me to wait for a minute.

"Curtis, where are you supposed to be?"

"Sir, I'm looking for Private Cicarello and Private Devon, sir. They disappeared after reveille."

He frowned. "Did Drill Sergeant Kent give you this order?"

"Sir, yes, sir." I didn't tell him the stakes. There was nothing he could do, anyway.

He frowned again and looked at the ground, shaking his head. "Privates Cicarello and Devon have been sitting in on a conference call at HQ this morning. Each barracks had to send two of their men in for a briefing before the call." He must have seen my face. "They should be finishing up now."

"Thank you, sir. Permission to leave, sir?"

Miller rubbed his chin with one hand. It was obvious that he wasn't sure what Kent's motive was, why he would send me looking if he knew perfectly well where they were. I wanted to tell him it was because he could. "Curtis, what did he tell you the punishment would be?"

"Doesn't matter, sir." I shook my head.

He sighed. "As you were."

When I stepped back into HQ, the receptionist was apologetic. She hadn't known Greg and Charlie were in on the call. Then she told me it was running late and they would probably be another fifteen minutes at least.

"If you could, please, ma'am, could you interrupt the call to see if they're still needed?"

They weren't. They took one look at me and their eyes narrowed.

"Thank you, ma'am," I nodded at her, and then I said to them, "Privates, DS Kent wants you at the Roster on the double."

They walked just far enough afield for Kent to see us coming. I didn't miss the way he checked his watch. Two hours, sixteen minutes, at least according to the clock I'd seen in the HQ building. Greg and Charlie stopped then, and Greg turned to Charlie and said, "Hey, man, I'm not in the mood for the Roster today. How 'bout you?"

Charlie looked at me with cold grey eyes. "Nah, man. Let's go take a nap until chow."

They turned to go and I don't know, something just snapped. I'd spent half the morning looking for people that weren't lost, weren't missing. And it was a damn set up.

I didn't say a word. I just grabbed Greg by the nape of his neck and kicked the back of his knee as hard as I could, dropping him. Charlie hesitated. Greg was the brawn. Charlie was just the sidekick.

Greg swore viciously. "Curtis, you mother—"

I put my boot on the back of his neck, and I leaned in hard. I hated what they'd turned me into. I wasn't afraid to fight. That wasn't it. Any of the gang would tell you that for a guy my age and size, I could more than hold my own. But I didn't want to be _this._ I didn't want to sell my soul to become a brainwashed lackey willing to lick boots to keep the peace.

"Private Cicarello," I seethed, "I gave you an order. If you don't get up and follow that order, I swear to God I'm gonna—"

"PUNY!" DS Kent had come up behind us without my noticing. He quickly dropped me beside Greg, mimicking the move I'd just used on him. Except I'd left Greg just enough room to breathe. Just when things started to go gray, he lifted his foot and slammed it down on my back, instead. I let out an involuntary cry. "DO the duties of your post include physical restraint of a subordinate?!"

"No, sir," I grunted. Greg got up. I couldn't see him anymore.

"Then WHY is it that I found you with your foot on Private Cicarello's neck?!" He pressed harder. I saw stars. I felt like I was gonna collapse into a flat cartoon pancake under his boot. I wondered vaguely if my eyeballs would pop out like when Jerry dropped something on Tom's tail.

"Sir," I groaned. It hurt to breathe. He shifted again until his foot was mostly squashing my left side, and I swear I thought I heard a crack. I sure exploded in pain, whatever it was. He didn't let me answer. He just lifted his foot all of a sudden and shouted,

"ON YOUR FEET, PUNY!"

I couldn't do more than curl around my aching ribs and greedily swallow air in short, shallow breaths.

"I said ON. YOUR. FEET!" When I didn't move, he pulled me up by my right arm. "PUNY, it is now past 0830. You have ten minutes to gear up and get back out here. You owe this team two hours and twenty-three minutes. MOVE!" As I headed for Red Flag, Kent hollered at Greg and Charlie to get their asses on top deck. He was done with me.

Walking back to Red Flag, I had to pass through the quad. DS Miller was there with Black Flag, still drilling. He stopped me again.

"Curtis," he said, looking out past me, toward the Roster. "Are you alright?"

"I don't have time to talk, sir," I said. "I've got ten minutes to gear up and get top deck."

"Private," he started again. He was angry. There was something like concern on his face, but I was tired. There was nothing he could do, or he'd have done it already. And every minute that passed just promised me another minute of harassment and humiliation. And more pain.

"I owe the team two twenty-three, sir," I said. He didn't punish me when I stepped around him and continued to Red Flag without requesting permission to continue on my way.

* * *

I was determined to complete every minute, though it was a fool's errand. Kent knew there was no way I'd even last an hour in full gear. He savored it. He thought of me struggling, stumbling, dead on my feet. Dead soul. Dead dignity. Dead hope. Void. Empty. Done.

He wanted that. He needed it, craved it. He craved it the way I craved Pepsi and chocolate cake and…home. So I had to stay on my feet. I had to make it. It didn't have to be fast. It didn't have to be tight. But I couldn't fall down. He specifically wanted me to fall. He longed for me to be unable to rise again. I wasn't going to give him either one.

I wasn't.

* * *

I took myself home as my body slogged through the Roster, forward and backward. I climbed up the porch steps and ducked into the dimness of our living room. Sodapop was flopped on the couch watching a variety show, still for a few rare moments. Darry turned cool eyes to me and ordered me to get started on my homework.

I was on the walk to Dixon Pond, and then I was diving in. I was up on the railroad bridge. I was falling off it again. This time, though, I caught myself and got myself back up on my own. I was running from Katie Lee's brothers, and then they turned into a tornado. I saw the barn door coming at me this time, and I ducked down, crawling under it as it chased me across the barn. And then it started all over again, playing in my head until the filmstrip snapped and wouldn't run again.

Soda flashed in front of me, then Darry. And then Dr. Joseph stood in front of me. He steadied me, hands on my shoulders, and said,

"Kid, you're done. Take a load off."

Then he took the bandages off my back and the weight that had been such a burden made me stumble with the absence of it. He caught me, and he held me until the world stopped heaving under my boots.

And then I blinked and it was DS Miller standing there, along with DS Kent, Red Flag, and Colonel Messner.

"Private First Class!" DS Miller called sharply.

"Sir, yes, sir!" I called back, swaying. But I stayed on my feet.

"Report to the infirmary," he ordered.

Nurse Ratched gave me the customary two aspirin and a cup of water. Then she barked at me to lie down, and she gave me some ice and pulled a curtain around me. I thought I would sleep, but I didn't. I couldn't. I was stuck on go.

* * *


	8. Chapter 8

* * *

**Std disclaimer: I don't own anything about The Outsiders (book or movie, characters, TV scripts, or anything else)**

**

* * *

**

I left the infirmary just before lights out, with a pass that contained those familiar letters: _2DLD._ Ratched's answer to everything.

On Saturday, the last of my 2DLD, I was in class with the other PFC's (there were seven of us now, but still no others from Red Flag). PFC Clark from Black Flag took advantage of the instructor's unusual tardiness to whisper,

"Did you know your drill sergeant was reprimanded?"

I shook my head, intrigued.

"Yeah. Miller was pacing all over the place. We couldn't figure out what was going on, why he was so keyed up. We thought we'd done something wrong. He cut drill a few minutes early and put us on the lake. He left me in charge, said he had to go to HQ." Clark glanced at the door. Still no sign of our instructor. "Word has it, he went to ask the Colonel to come out to the Roster, but the Colonel was tied up on a call. I didn't know what to do because Brown Flag came to bump us so they could do their two footballs, so I sent everyone to the machine shop and went looking for Miller to tell him where we were." Clark glanced at the door again. The instructor was talking to one of the staff from HQ. It looked like he'd be a while, so Clark went on. "Man, you were like a zombie out there. The Colonel and Miller came up about then, and the Colonel asked Kent how long you'd been at it. He tried to lie, but Miller told him you'd been out there for exactly two hours and twenty-six minutes, which he knew because he'd started his stopwatch when you went out."

I was surprised to hear that. I'd assumed they'd pulled me early somehow.

"Kent called to you, ordered you to fall out, but it was like you didn't hear him or something," Clark shook his head. "Man, how the hell did you get through two hours like that? Miller had to wade out into the mud slush just to stop you."

I shrugged. Hell if I knew. But it explained the odd looks I'd get whenever we passed another Flag on the breezeway or as we left the quad after drills. Heads couldn't move. You had to stare straight ahead if you were in formation, but that didn't stop the guys from sliding their eyes in my direction.

Our barracks had gone quiet again, too, the way it had after Greensboro. I wondered how long it would last before the other shoe dropped, but I enjoyed the quiet while I had it. It wasn't any friendlier. It was just that everyone knew we were being watched closely and behaved accordingly. It must have been killing DS Kent. For that alone, I was grateful.

I got a letter from home that night, and I had to turn toward the wall again.

* * *

_**July 4**__**th**__**, 1967**_

_**Hey, Pony!**_

_**Guess you are gone on that overnight today. Darry's been like a mother hen clucking about how they aren't giving you any food. But I told him nobody ain't never died going one day without and besides your supposed to be finding some anyway. Pretty tuff stuff. I know you said I wouldn't like it for long but I still wish I was there. With all the pretty socy girls away for the summer with their socy parents there's only neighborhood girls hanging around the DX and its getting dull with just the same old people passing through.**_

_**Darry's on a job right now roofing a place looks out over those socy houses near where the American Legion sets off fireworks and we broke him down so he's gonna let us up on that roof to watch. **_

_**He's real proud about that Private First Class thing too, he's been telling anybody who will listen about how you were the first in your group. I know you said it ain't a good thing but we think its real tuff anyhow. Just remmember what I said and watch yourself. **_

_**I gotta get this done before Darry gets home. He'd be mad if he read this and saw how I told you the way he's fussing about your trip. If he knew I was writing he'd say hey so I guess I'll say it for him instead. Hey. **_

_**Soda**_

* * *

Soda and Darry hadn't gotten my latest letter yet, or they'd know the overnight was cancelled. I wanted to write them back but didn't know what to say. I didn't know how much longer I could pretend things were okay and not let everything spill out on the paper. And that would only make them feel helpless and nuts. I didn't figure there was anything worse than worrying about someone who might as well be a million miles away.

I'd barely tucked their letter in my footlocker when a shadow appeared over me. When I turned around I expected to see anyone but Kent.

"Private Puny, on your feet," he said it at normal volume instead of hollering like usual. My heart started jackhammering in my chest. "Follow me."

He led me outside, around the back of the barracks, and then he slammed me face first into the wall and leaned in close. "Monday morning at 0800, you will be called to HQ to speak with the Colonel. I'm sure I don't need to remind you how much I can make you wish you were dead, but since you seem to be a glutton for punishment, let me say it again. If you badmouth me in there, if you cause me any trouble at all, you won't ever be going home."

And he left me there, shaking, knowing he'd gotten his point across.

* * *

At the dress blues meeting on Sunday morning, Greg and Charlie made PFC and I made Lance Corporal. The Colonel mentioned my ability to endure tough trials, and I know he was talking about that full gear episode on the Roster. While Red Flag was carefully silent, Black Flag sent up an OORAH and I had to clench my jaw to keep from grinning at the dirty look Kent sent their way.

After we were dismissed, we changed out of our dress blues and got back to reality. With that meeting with the Colonel looming, Kent left me alone and focused on Wade, instead. He didn't go to any extremes. It must have been killing him to restrain himself and not lay a hand on anyone. But there was plenty of ridicule and Kent worked Wade to multiple muscle failures throughout the day. I'll say one thing for that kid. He doesn't complain. I sort of assumed he'd be a crybaby, but he just sucked everything up with a solemn look. Sometimes his face got real red, though, and I couldn't tell if he was mad or just ashamed.

By the time rest rolled around, Wade just hit his rack and didn't move. I'd have been worried, except I could see him breathing. Usually he writes letters or reads, but he just threw one arm across his face and shut his eyes. I thought he was asleep already, but when Kent stormed in and slapped up new detail sheets (changing things at the last minute was one of his favorite ways to get at a guy), he lifted his head woozily and rolled to his feet. I knew without looking that Kent had pulled me off of fire watch and had put Wade on. The way Wade's head dropped and he sighed was all the proof I needed, but I checked, anyway.

Wade shoved his stocking feet back into his boots and yanked his camo jacket out of his footlocker and headed to the latrine. I felt bad for him, but there wasn't much I could do. As Lance Corporal, I'd earned the privilege of pulling people from duty if needed, but I had to justify it on the detail log. There wasn't much that would get you out of anything in Rat City, either.

Still, an idea formed in my head. I made sure Kurt, who can see into the latrine from his rack, saw me "accidentally" run into Wade as he was coming out and I was going in. Thanks to his natural lack of grace, Wade stumbled back into the wall of the last toilet stall, and I fell against it too, hiding my fist in front of me and smacking the cool metal with it so that it made a loud boom. Then I grabbed Wade by his shoulders as if to steady him and said loudly,

"Sorry, Private, I didn't see you." I hurriedly wet some paper towels under the sink and slapped them against the back of his head, adding, "Looks like I gave you a pretty big lump. Better go to the infirmary and get that checked out…"

Wade met my eyes for a second, and then he winced pretty convincingly and even wobbled on his feet a little as I pushed him in front of me, toward the barracks door.

I grabbed a blank medical chit and filled it out quickly. Then I sent Wade on his way and grabbed the detail sheets. I flipped through them needlessly, knowing it had been two weeks since Greg had pulled fire watch. We all knew it wasn't fair, but none of us had been willing to take Kent's bait.

"Private Cicarello," I called, and his head snapped up. The look on his face had me fighting the corners of my mouth. "I need you on fire watch. Milsap's been sent to the infirmary."

He rose slowly off his rack, his eyes narrowing. But he put his boots on, and just to prove he was a tough guy, he headed toward the door without his camo jacket. "You know you're gonna get it for this, right?" He said it softly enough that I doubted anyone heard.

I just blinked at him. "Private, did you just threaten a superior officer?"

He just blinked back. I could see him considering his options. The whole barracks had heard my question, even if they hadn't heard Greg's remark, and the room held its breath. I could feel three pairs of eyes on us, waiting for Greg's answer. Finally, after a long pause, he spat, "Sir, I apologize, sir."

I simply said, "Fire watch, Private," and let it drop. Rank or no rank, he'd find a way to pay it back. But it didn't matter. I'd shown the others something they hadn't expected. As I watched the barracks door close behind Greg, I happened to catch a glimpse of Kurt. He was staring at me with an odd expression on his face, and when he saw me looking, he rolled over on his side, away from me.

When the call for lights out came, I tried to stay awake. I left my boots on, because I was required to stay fully dressed until whatever guy was on fire watch returned. Usually I just slept in them. Besides, Greg's best chance for a crack at me would be when he returned from fire watch in two hours, and I knew he wouldn't pass it up. Having my boots on would give me something forceful to kick with.

* * *

I didn't know I'd fallen asleep until someone grabbed my ankles and someone else grabbed my arms. The moon was hidden behind the overcast sky, and it was pitch black. Something came down over my mouth just as I let out a yell, and then something else came down over my head. Shit.

My heart started racing as quick hands bound my ankles and my wrists. Someone grabbed me roughly, not speaking, and I tried to figure out who it was. It didn't seem like Greg or Charlie. He was bigger. To tell the truth, it felt just like the rare occasion when, goofing off at home, Darry would sling me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and then dump me on the nearest bed or couch to tickle me until I hollered 'uncle'. Except for the fun part, that is.

I could hear some sort of struggle. Loud scuffling and a couple of banging noises. And then whoever had me stomped out of the barracks. When I tried to wriggle out of their hold, a fist bashed me in the back. When that someone finally dumped me, it sure wasn't onto a soft bed. It was hard, but it gave, too. And when it gave again as something else thudded beside me, I realized I was in the back of a transport. Cattle car. And it was _someone else _that had been dumped beside me, not _something_ else.

We'd done some drills in full gear, climbing into the cattle car and jumping off again, as if in combat. I sure didn't like the fact that I was in one just now, because that meant I was going for a drive. And I might not be coming back. Kent's threat rang in my ears. I wondered if he was the big guy that had dumped me here.

Someone was breathing hard beside me, and then two more someones crashed down practically on top of us, since me and the other guy hadn't moved. We moved now, wriggling out from under the others. I wondered who everyone was. I'd counted and waited, but there were only four. Judging by the commotion in the barracks, I'd guess Wade was here somewhere. But I wasn't sure about the other two. There were a lot of guys from other barracks that Greg and Charlie didn't like much, either, but we had so little chance to even see one another, let alone exchange words, that I didn't figure there was anyone else they'd be this pissed at. But it sure wasn't Greg or Charlie that had hauled me out here.

The engine started up. One of the guys let out a muffled moan. I wanted to, too. Not good. I thought of Darry and Soda. I wondered if I'd ever see them again. Dread crept in as we started rolling. It felt like we were going downhill. I thought wildly of the lake and my heart leapt into my throat. Jesus. If that was where we were headed, it might not hurt to send up a quick prayer.

Still, as complete and total as the fear was, I couldn't keep a sarcastic thought out of my head as we began bouncing faster. _Oorah._


	9. Chapter 9

**Std disclaimer: I don't own anything about The Outsiders (book or movie, characters, TV scripts, or anything else)**

**

* * *

**

I tried to stay calm as I realized we were rolling right out the front gates. The good thing was, it pretty much confirmed that Kent was driving. Anybody else would have been stopped by the gate guards. I felt the truck pass over the cattle guard and hit the long dirt road. It would be about eight miles to the highway, if he turned left.

He did. I began trying to track our direction by the turns we were taking. He turned north onto the highway. I ticked off the turns. East. North. East. But we drove for so long I lost track. The other guys were silent. Waiting. Wondering.

When we finally stopped, it felt as though the cattle car itself tensed up and held its breath. The guy next to me sort of yelped in fear as he was grabbed out of the truck. Other than the crunching of feet on gravel, I heard nothing.

It was freezing, and the air was thick with humidity and the smell of ozone. We'd had a few spectacular thunderstorms this summer so far. In outdoor survival class, we'd been told we were starting 'monsoon season' early. Sort of like our storms in Oklahoma but without tornadoes. I wasn't too crazy about the idea of getting caught out in one of those middle-of-the-night thunderstorms I'd been hearing, though.

The footsteps faded away. They'd taken him out farther than I could hear. They. Or he. There had been more than one person grabbing me and binding me up, but I couldn't say whether the driver was alone now, or if he had friends. A cold shiver coursed through me. Jesus. Not good. I wondered what they were doing to the guy…if he'd still be alive when they were finished. On one hand, it was like watching from outside. I couldn't really believe this was happening, and yet I could. It was as real as it was ever going to get. I began to shake.

When they came back (this time, listening closely I made out at least two sets of footsteps), the truck started rolling again. Again, I tried to track the turns, because I knew that in general, we were north northeast of camp. And we continued farther north, though not so much east anymore. I wondered if we were in Colorado by now, and that thought made the shivering worse.

One by one, we were pulled out, and then the truck would drive on again until it was just me left. I wondered if those other guys were lying dead in the middle of nowhere, if they would become one of those stories on the news. They'd say a body was found in a remote part of New Mexico or Colorado and had yet to be identified. They'd give a phone number for the sheriff's office to call if you thought you might know the guy.

I wondered how long it would be before Darry and Soda found out something was wrong. And I felt a surge of anger rise up under the cold dregs of fear. Hadn't they been through enough because of me? I closed my eyes to keep from crying. If it was Kent, and I was pretty sure it was, I didn't want to give him the satisfaction.

Eventually, whether I wanted it to come or not, the moment arrived when the truck stopped for the last time and rough hands hauled me out of the back, slinging me back over a hard shoulder. I thought again of Darry and wished desperately that it was him, that I'd somehow wind up on the couch under nothing worse than his quick fingers tickling at my ribs. But it seemed silly and childish now. Something you would do to a kid. And I sure didn't feel like a kid anymore.

I hit the ground roughly, before I even really felt myself going down. I felt something at my ankles, a pulling, and I heard the _snick_ of rope being cut. But though it loosened a little, it still held me. Smart. Break the binds, but leave me to work my way out of them. It gave me hope that I was going to be left here, wherever _here_ was, alive. The hood came off next, but he was behind me. He reached around and ripped the tape off my mouth. He never said a word. Somehow, I knew that trying to get a look at him, to get confirmation that it was Kent, would only make things worse. So I didn't look back.

I took a couple swift kicks to my kidneys, but that was it. The footsteps crunched away. The truck, still running in the distance, clanked into gear and rumbled away. I was where I was gonna be, which was the middle of nowhere. I just stayed where I was and waited for my eyes to adjust.

It was freezing out, and I had just my RCJMC t-shirt and camo pants on, along with my socks and boots. I had no water. No food. Not a damn thing besides me, the ropes still twisted around my wrists and ankles, and possibly the hood, which I suspected was just a pillow case.

I froze when a dull flash of far-off lightning from what I thought was the south showed me that I was just on the edge of a bluff. If I had moved just a few inches forward before my eyes had adjusted, I'd have taken a pretty nasty fall.

I wasn't going to be able to move unless I got the ropes off, so I started with my hands, wiggling and twisting and trying to get those ropes to loosen, though each twist and turn rubbed them more and more raw until I was wincing and cursing and wiggling. But after some time, I was able to grab one dangling end and get my arms out from behind my back, which felt good. Then I rolled up into a sitting position and unwound the rope from my ankles.

I wondered again how quickly Darry and Soda would find out that something was wrong. I thought of how Darry would pace the floor and how Soda would get all jazzed up with righteous anger and start talking about getting even. Next thing you know, Two-Bit would be in on it, too, if he was around, and they'd drive Darry nuts with all their empty threats and increasingly imaginative revenge schemes.

That thought actually made me smile a little as I tucked my arms into my shirt so that the armholes hung empty. Then I put one arm back through. I was right about the hood. It was just a pillow case. But it was a little extra warmth, at least, and I scooted backward to lean against the trunk of a pine tree and tried to arrange it so the case covered my front.

The way I figured it, one of two things would happen. Either they'd realize we hadn't left on our own, or they wouldn't. And if they didn't, I was in big, big trouble. The judge had made it clear. Finish camp or else. Whether the 'or else' meant jail or a boys' home, I wasn't sure, but I didn't like the thought of either one. That meant the only thing to do was head back to camp, if I could figure out just where that was.

I didn't think sleep would catch me, but it grabbed hold and pulled me under a few times. It couldn't keep me for long, though, before the call of an owl or the soft rumble of thunder in the distance would have me jerking awake. The soft gray edges that hinted at morning gave me just enough of a view to know I was about halfway up a pine-covered mountain. I couldn't see well enough to get up and want to walk just yet, and I sure as hell wasn't going to be able to doze any more, what with thinking about how I needed to get back to camp to head off any accusations that I'd gone AWOL by choice.

I wondered where the others were and what condition they were in. Did Kent just dump them, too? Or did he hurt them first? My back was sore from the hard kicks he'd given me, but after everything else I'd been through so far, that dull ache was the least of my worries.

Folks would always tell the general public that if they got lost hiking or camping, they should stay exactly where they were and try to stay calm until help arrived. In survival classes, however, we learned there were only two real ways to save your ass if you were in my situation, with no water or food and no adequate shelter: find water or a road and follow it to civilization.

I had only a vague idea where a road could be, and that was west southwest, if I was right in the first place and hadn't gotten mixed up in my terror. We'd spent a lot of time studying maps of the surrounding area and plotting routes for fictional missions. We'd learned about the various topographical landmarks, like the Stovepipe, which was north northeast of camp, also. But I'd always only seen it from camp, and I wondered if I'd recognize it from a different angle.

The lake we swam in at camp was formed by a river that snaked around the base of the Stovepipe and went all the way up into Colorado, where it dwindled to a creek. I thought that might be my best shot. Find the creek, follow it until it widened into a river, then follow that to the Pipe which would lead to the lake. From there, it would just be a matter of following the trail that cut out of the scrub pines right next to Red Flag. But first I had to find the creek.

It was still not light enough out, though things were taking shape slowly. I occupied myself by watering a nearby bush and wondering again where the other guys were and what shape they were in. I thought of Wade, with his quiet acceptance. Was he just sitting against a tree, like me, trying to figure it all out? Or was he curled up, bawling like a baby like I wanted to be?

The only good thing about my predicament was that there was no one around to harass me. I was finally alone, out from under Kent. And I didn't have to worry about what Greg or Charlie would pull next. There was merit to that, even though I'd just as soon be back in camp putting up with all that junk, counting the days until August 25th.

I sat there watching the sun rise. It made me think of Johnny and the church in Windrixville, which made me crave a cigarette so bad my fingers itched. After the concussion and how Soda broke down and begged me and Darry to stop fighting, I stopped smoking. I'm not sure why, except that I'd had a vague thought as we chased him to the park about how I could probably run a lot faster if I'd quit smoking so much. And then I just sort of wound down like an old watch until suddenly I wasn't bugging Darry to buy me more smokes. But I sure wanted one now.

I remembered how I'd recited that Frost poem for Johnny and how much he'd liked it. How he'd said those last words that echoed in my head every time I caught a sunrise or a sunset. Gold felt like a long time ago, and I felt like I let him down somehow.

With the sun up, I shook off all those unpleasant thoughts and got to my feet. As an afterthought, I rolled up the ropes that had imprisoned me and tucked them into the pockets of my camo pants. I even folded the pillowcase in half and then rolled it tightly and tucked that fat log of fabric into another pocket. The weight of those things was slight, but they felt odd.

I turned every which way, slowly, and tried to decide what it was I was seeing. Far, far to the south, I saw what looked like reddish formations of rock. It was so distant, though, that I couldn't tell if it was the Stovepipe or not. The Pipe was pretty dramatic as seen from camp, with its long, skinny "pipe" jutting out toward the sky and the rest of it lying down flat and squat. I didn't know for sure that heading south would get me anyplace good, but sitting still and hoping for help was going to get me nowhere even faster.

With nothing but a best guess to guide me, I started carefully down the mountainside.


	10. Chapter 10

**Std disclaimer: I don't own anything about The Outsiders (book or movie, characters, TV scripts, or anything else)**

**

* * *

**

No compass. No map. No watch. No food. No water. I realized as I made my way down the mountain that whether he'd meant to or not, Kent had done me a favor leaving me up on that bluff. If I'd met dawn in the valley I was quickly approaching, I'd have been completely unable to guess at a direction. Well, I would have known in general which direction I was facing, of course, with the sunrise being predictably in the east. But I wouldn't have been able to see the blurry hint of what may or may not be the Stovepipe.

The pines were growing denser. I wished like hell I had that knife. Instead, every few trees, I stopped to beat an obvious mark into the bark of a tree with a rock. If I ended up going in circles, I'd realize it pretty quick. And if anyone made it out this way to look for us, they might have a hope of finding me, though I couldn't say how the others would fare.

Water was top priority, and I kept my eyes peeled and my ears open. They say you can smell water, and I guess that's true. But I wasn't sure how much water it would take, and I doubted that I'd smell it before I heard it.

It was lonely out here with no one to talk to, which was funny because it wasn't like I talked much more at camp. But just having other people around was something, I guess. I sure hoped to find someone else soon. In the meantime, I tried to picture Soda and I trudging along. But he would have started complaining after about five minutes about there being nothing to do. Two-Bit would have been cracking jokes, which sure would have passed the time easier, but when it came to working for things like finding food or making a shelter, he'd have done more goofing off than work. Darry. I tried to figure out what Darry would do if he were me, because Darry usually doesn't get too excited about things. He just looks at everything with those cool eyes of his and gets things done, no matter how boring or how difficult. I guessed if I had to choose anyone to be with me just then, it would be Darry. I felt a little guilty about that, about the fact that I wouldn't choose Soda.

Under the canopy of trees, it was cold and shadowy, but I was okay since I was moving. I watched the sky carefully, though. If you got wet, it was possible to die of hypothermia in sixty degree weather. Hard to believe that, really. But that's what we learned in survival class. Exertion generated heat, though, so until I stopped moving for any length of time or unless I got drenched, I wasn't going to die from cold. Now dehydration was another story. Three days was about as long as you could live without water. The thought that I was on day one of three made me a little edgy, but I was pretty sure I was out of luck until that clearing…and maybe not even then.

I stopped to rest some time later, easing down on a fallen, charred tree. Lightning? That put a little wrinkle in my forehead. The sky was still clear, though. I panicked a little, realizing it wasn't as easy to keep the sun where I wanted it, and that I'd wandered a little bit off my intended course. From my starting point, I'd seen clearly that the way to go was south by southwest, and that doing so would take me deep into a gorge that opened into a clearing. After the clearing would come a climb uphill, where the pines would thin out and give way to scrub brush and piñon pines, which look more like fat green bushes. That'd be one source of food…piñon nuts.

But it was hard to know exactly where I was just now and whether I was still headed for that clearing. All I could see was trees and more trees.

I started walking again. I was scared. I mean, at least with Johnny, I'd had baloney. And with the barn, there were enough peach trees nearby to make sure I wouldn't starve. I had a roof over my head in both places, and company in one of them. Now I was just this tree marking, wandering idiot with too much time to think. I wasn't even sure it was possible that I would reach the clearing in one day's walk.

It was Monday, July 10th. I wondered if it was 0800 yet. It had to be. Later, even. I wondered what the Colonel would think when I didn't show up for that hearing. I wondered, too, what Kent was going to say about my disappearance. And Wade's. I was pretty sure he was one of the others, which meant that Kent's barracks was at least two men down, maybe more. Why would he set himself up to look bad? Greensboro's drill sergeant sure wasn't winning any leadership awards.

And if it had been Kent that had dropped us all off in the middle of nowhere, why had he cut the ropes? Why not just leave us tied and gagged and helpless? I thought of a short story we had read in English. _The Most Dangerous Game_. It was about a guy, Sanger Rainsford, who was traveling through the Caribbean on his way to Brazil to hunt Jaguar. He fell overboard and ended up stranded on an island, where he ran into another guy who was crazier about hunting than he was. That guy, General Zaroff, he was out of his mind. He tricked ships into crashing near his island and when the crews would wade ashore, he'd capture them and give them a choice between being murdered by his manservant, Ivan, or be hunted. If they lasted three days, Zaroff promised to release them. Sportsmanship and all that. No one had ever survived so far, but Rainsford, the jaguar hunter, took him up on it, anyway, because who wouldn't want to have at least a shot at life?

I felt a little bit like Rainsford, though I sure hoped Kent wasn't stalking me. But at least Rainsford got a sack of food and a knife. What did I have besides a couple lengths of rope, a pillow case, and a sharp rock?

Still, I figured maybe Kent was just too cocky to consider that any of us would ever make it back to snitch on him. He probably figured that even unbound, we'd never make it on our own. Which, of course, made me want to prove him wrong. It was good to have a goal besides just basic survival. I not only strove to find water and food but see the look on his face when I made it back to camp, hopefully with the rest of the guys.

Every now and then, I let out the whistle me and Johnny had used…long and low, with that high note at the end. I didn't hear anything back, but I thought maybe I eventually would. I wished I could do one of those wolf-whistles, where you stick your fingers in your mouth. That one would carry a lot farther than mine. But though I'd tried it a million times, the best I ever got was farting noises, which Two-Bit loved and which made Soda laugh. But it wasn't going to help much more than the signal whistle.

After what felt like hours, I stopped again, leaning on the trunk of a pine tree. I didn't know whether it was just wishful thinking or not, but it seemed like the trees were thinning out some. I'd been heading downward so long that when I turned all I could see was green rising behind me, and a tiny bit of mostly blue sky.

My stomach growled, and then it ached and then it gnawed painfully as if turning itself inside out like a jeans pocket to show how empty it was. But there was nothing except pine trees as far as I could see. Technically, the seeds were edible, but who wanted to eat a small pine cone? I wasn't that desperate just yet. And the cones were past their best time, which is in the very early spring. It was summer now, and they were large and probably past their prime.

As the day wore on, fat clouds scudded by. I started to see more and more sky, though it didn't look like I was going to reach an actual clearing anytime soon. My whistles still went unanswered, as did the loud shouts I tried out. OORAH seemed the best word, because it would identify me as something more than just a wild animal. Every so often, I would cup my hands in front of my mouth and call it out, long and loud.

Anyway, the sky was growing thick with clouds. Menacingly dark ones, too. And there was a faint rumbling starting up to the right of me. I looked all around me and realized the trees were going to have to become a shelter. I tried to gather some snags, which are branches that have died and fallen from a tree but get caught in the living branches, but there really weren't many. Every tree was vibrant and green. Snapping off dangling dead branches would have been no problem, but if you think using a sharp rock to break off living branches is easy, you've got another think coming. I sawed and sawed, pulled, yanked, and tore and still only came up with about a half dozen young branches in addition to the couple dozen snags I'd found.

The rumbling got louder and the wind grew more insistent. I quickly wove the branches together as best I could until I had a small but serviceable lean-to. I used those ropes I'd been bound in to tether it to the trunk of a large old pine with a good natural canopy of its own. It started to sprinkle as I shoved dropped pine needles together in a large pile and shoved them under the lean-to.

When the rain began to pick up, I gave up and crawled inside, glad I wasn't the type of guy to get itchy in closed in places. I pulled out that pillow case again and laid it over my arms and tucked my knees in toward my chest. I never thought for a second that I'd get a wink of sleep, but sometime after the loud crashing of thunder eased up, I dropped off.

* * *

When it was still that soupy gray-blue outside, just before dawn, I ducked out from under the lean-to. It was soggy, but it had done its job. I was only a little damp. It was probably luck. I think I'd set my angle just right for the slant of the rain. It took a little time, but I got the ropes untied from the tree and the pillowcase rolled and tucked them back into my pockets.

I was cold, no doubt about it. My teeth were chattering as I marked a tree. I was surprised I even had to go, seeing as how I'd been a whole day without water. I felt heavy and slow, but I forced myself into a run so I could warm up. As I ran, I put out a few more OORAHs, though I didn't cup my hands in front of my mouth.

I stopped so abruptly I almost tripped over my own feet. Did I imagine that? "OORAH!" I called again, and this time I didn't move.

"oorah!" came the distant but clear response.

I let out a whoop and bounded forward a few steps, trying to figure just where it was coming from. "OORAH!" I called again. The other guy and I kept it up, with me taking a few big steps in this direction or that direction until I knew for sure that it was coming from ahead of me and just to the right.

We made slow but steady progress, my eyes darting around everywhere trying to make out RCJMC greens in a mess of forest greens. In the end, I didn't so much see _him_ as I saw just some sort of movement up ahead. I'd never been so glad to see a soul in my life, not even when I realized Darry and Soda had found me at the old Winslow place.

Kurt was limping a little, but he was ok enough to walk a little faster when we finally saw each other in the mess of trees. I wondered if I looked as filthy as he did. He looked like he'd slept in the mud run. When we finally were close enough to talk, he said,

"Jesus Christ, I thought I'd never see anyone again."

I nodded. "Me, too."

We sat down against neighboring trees to catch our breath. He winced and adjusted his position, as if it hurt to sit down. "Don't suppose you know where the nearest 7-11 is?"

I chuckled. "I don't even know where the nearest trickle of piss is."

He smirked and grabbed a handful of pine needles. Then he tossed them angrily. "You see them?"

I knew who he meant. "Nope," I shook my head. "I know one of them had to be Kent, though."

Kurt nodded. "I figured. And probably Greg and Charlie, too." He swore.

"Oorah," I agreed. He chuckled.

"You and that word," he shook his head. "I'd think you'd be the last person to want to have anything to do with anything Marine. Used to think I might enlist, but after this bullshit..." he trailed off.

I just nodded again. "We probably ought to get moving again."

He sighed. In wordless agreement, we got to our feet. "Got any food?"

"Hell, no. I'm lucky I've got boots," I said, and I noticed he was wearing his, too.

"They were kind enough to remember to bring them along. Dropped them on top of me as they hi-tailed it out of there after dumping me," he explained.

We trudged along silently for a few minutes. I couldn't say I was happy, exactly, but I sure felt better to have someone around, even if it was Kurt. He stopped again, so I stopped with him.

"Look, Curtis," he began. Then he looked away, over my shoulder. "Back at camp, I was—"

I shook my head. "Don't worry about it."

"I was an ass," he finished.

"Yeah," I nodded. He laughed.

"Don't cut me any slack or anything," he retorted. "We're only lost in some damn forest or another. Probably gonna die out here."

"Speak for yourself, Private," I smirked.

We hit the clearing in the early afternoon. The sun was as hot as it was going to get. I was surprised to find I was sweating. When I looked over at Kurt, though, he was, too.

"Company, halt!" I said half-heartedly and flopped down on my back in the tall grass. Kurt just looked down at me for a minute. Then he shrugged and flopped beside me.

"You got any idea where we're going?" he asked a few minutes later. For some reason, it struck us both hilarious and we burst into wild laughter.

"Not a damn clue," I gasped, when I could finally talk. "Best I can figure, we keep heading southwest. Get up on that ridge," I pointed to the far end of the clearing, where the ground started to rise again, "and we see if we can find the Stovepipe."

"I thought I saw it," Kurt nodded. "But once I came downhill, I lost sight."

"Yeah." I yawned. "I'm really hoping we aren't too far off course. If we can see the 'Pipe from the top of that ridge, maybe we can find the creek. And if we can find that, we're home free. Just a matter of time and effort."

Kurt sighed. "My feet are friggin' killing me."

"Oorah," I said. We started laughing again. I think we were both a little slap happy.

"Guess we better keep walking," he said with a heavy sigh, rolling to his feet.

I moaned. Kurt just held out a hand. I stared at it for a minute, thinking how crazy it was that just a few days ago he'd sooner have backhanded me. Then I grinned and let him help me up.

* * *

A/N: Hang in there. It was bound to get a little dull with a guy wandering around by himself. A necessary evil!


	11. Chapter 11

**Std disclaimer: I don't own anything about The Outsiders (book or movie, characters, TV scripts, or anything else)**

**

* * *

**

It was a hundred degrees if it was eighty-five, but the moisture in the air made everything heavy and sluggish, and nobody wanted to move. It wasn't getting the Alexander roof finished any faster, and the foreman had been riding my ass all morning about staying on schedule. I've wanted to haul off and hammer the guy more times than I care to count, but I learned a long time ago that if I wanted to work, I had to keep my temper in check. I'd gone through two other bosses thanks to my attitude. But that was when I was just a scared, angry guy whose parents had just died. I'd never done any real work before, just a couple haphazard paper routes and a few lawns.

Now I'm just a scared roof rat with two brothers to feed. The anger might fade, but the fear never goes away. You just learn to live with it, same as a bad back or crummy eyesight, I guess.

"Johnson," I called, "wake up!"

I swear, that guy must have anvils for eyelids. He'd nod off any old place. Stupid, useless moron. But he's some relation of Murphy's, so he's got a job whether he lifts a finger or not. Doesn't seem to matter that the guy puts people in danger falling asleep just anywhere that way. And it's not like he's sick or anything. He's just lazy. Oh, well. Nepotism at its finest.

Jesus, it was hot. I thought of Soda, who had the day off and was probably jacking up the electric bill running every table fan and the cooler as well. Blockhead. But I grinned. It was hard to stay annoyed at Soda. All he had to do was grin at you, and, besides, Ponyboy and I had a soft spot in common where he was concerned. Though some days I wonder why.

The pounding of hammers, crude jokes, and the occasional catcalls that meant a pretty woman was strolling by were like music to me. It was only when the soundtrack stopped that I'd start to notice anything other than my own hammer, so it surprised me when a commotion down below turned my head.

"Soda?" I asked aloud. He caught sight of me about the time I saw him, and by the time I got down the ladder, he could barely keep still.

"Darry, Pony's missing," he said urgently.

"What?" I wasn't sure I'd heard him right over all the racket around us. I yanked off my hard hat in case it was getting in the way of my hearing.

"Pony," Soda said again, and this time I noticed how out of breath he was, as if he'd run all the way from home. "He's missing."

"Missing? From camp?" I asked stupidly. A place like that, with so many rules and so much structure…how could anyone go missing? But then I thought of Pony's last letter, which had just arrived last night, and how he'd said a guy went AWOL. "Soda, Pony knows he's got to finish this thing," I shook my head.

It didn't make sense. Of course, my brother didn't often make sense, at least not to me. Lord knows I tried to see where he was coming from, but most of the time, it seemed like he was living on another planet. For such a book-smart kid, he was awfully dense when it came to common sense. And that didn't make much sense to me. You'd think being smart would just mean you were smart all around, but Pony was a constant reminder that knowing a lot academically wasn't the same as knowing a lot about life and how things were once you slammed the covers of the books closed.

Soda shrugged, his eyes worried and his jaw tight. "Darry, all I know is some guy named Miller called and said Pony's been missing since yesterday morning at reveille. But it ain't just him, it's three other guys from his barracks, too."

"Are they together?" Now, that _really_ didn't make sense, considering that he'd been saying the other guys had been giving him and that skinny kid all kinds of trouble. I swear to God, if Pony's gone off half-cocked again, forgetting the consequences just like he forgets every other damn thing, I'll—

"Nobody knows," Soda was saying, shaking his head. "They've got a team out looking, but they haven't found anything so far."

I trudged over to the water cooler. It irritated me that we hadn't had a call until now, a day later. He could be halfway to Mexico by now. What the hell was going on at that place? Grudgingly, I wondered if all Soda's worries that things were rougher than Pony let on had been right, after all. A place like that, you didn't think they'd allow any nonsense. I mean, that was what those places were for, right? To knock out all the nonsense, get kids back on the straight and narrow.

Every muscle in my body clenched up as I thought about the judge. What the hell was he going to say if he found out? And then I realized that of course he'd find out. I sighed heavily, wiping my forearm across my brow. Sonofabitch. What else? What now? What next? I wished that for once, just once, I'd have a different set of questions for God, assuming there was one. Or that He'd listen when I talked. Pony must have been made in His image for sure, especially where ears were concerned.

Soda waited by my truck as I tried to reason with Murphy. He'd been pretty good about the whole fiasco in May, but it was just like with Buck. A boss has got only so much tolerance for personal issues, and both Murphy and Buck had pretty much met their limit.

Walking back to that truck to tell Soda I was stuck until the roof was finished was about the toughest thing I've ever had to do. I was sure if you had to look up _traitor_ in the dictionary, Soda would say you'd find my picture there. The accusation in his eyes twisted in my gut, but there was no reasoning with him. Far as he was concerned, we should be on the road to New Mexico already. The fact that Murphy told me I could have the rest of the week if we got the roof done by five didn't make a damn bit of difference to him. Not that I could blame him.

"Darry, how can you just stand there and tell me you've got a roof to finish? Ponyboy's _missing_," Soda pleaded. Those eyes of his can pull at more than just the ladies. I was half ready to hop in the truck and put the accelerator to the floorboards, Murphy be damned.

"Soda," I said with a calm I wasn't feeling, "even if we got on the road right now, there's not a hell of a lot we could do but sit and wait, anyway. We'll head out first thing tomorrow, I promise. For now, I need you to go home and sit by the phone. If you hear anything," I said, digging around in the glove box of our old truck until I found an old receipt and the stub of a pencil, "call this number. It'll ring in the trailer, and Murphy can get me."

He took it and looked down at it in disbelief. "Darry," he tried again. I just shook my head.

"Soda, I know you don't understand, but Murphy's a pretty decent guy to work for. I could walk away and find another job, I guess, but at some point, maybe this time, maybe not, I'm going to start getting passed over for younger guys who can whip up those ladders with three bundles and not break a sweat. A guy's reputation is everything in this business. If I start coming across as unreliable, I'll be out of a job quicker than you can say boy's home, and no one else will want to touch me."

Five minutes later I was back on the roof, trying to get the look on Soda's face out of my head. Tough luck, because it wasn't happening. Worrying about Ponyboy was pretty energizing stuff. I was driving nails in at a furious clip, and I wished for a minute that the other guys were our brothers, too. We'd have the roof done by three. Maybe sooner.

* * *

Kurt and I took turns with the OORAHs. Our mouths were dry, and we didn't talk much, even though I sort of wanted to. After being alone all day yesterday and spending most of camp not saying much, I just liked to hear anything that wasn't silence or an order. But we had to conserve hydration. Breathing and sweating were stealing enough. Talking would only increase it.

I hated to leave the clearing and start heading up that ridge. So far, the hike hadn't been so bad, mostly downhill. And now that we were weaker, from hunger and from thirst, it was about to get tough. The other thing worrying me was the sky. The clouds were building again, and since the sun was not yet completely eclipsed by them, I could see that it was getting on toward early evening. We probably had about two hours to dusk and three before we'd better be wherever it was we were going to be to settle in for the night.

"We'd better start thinking about shelter," I said, and Kurt followed my gaze up into the sky.

"Yeah," he nodded. "What did you do last night?"

I told him about the lean-to I'd made, how it kept me mostly dry. He'd ended up on a ledge in the hillside and had done basically the same thing, except he'd leaned the boughs against the rocks and could only hope the wind wouldn't pull them off of him since he didn't have any way to tie it down. He'd spent most of the night holding on to it, just in case. But like me, he'd only gotten a little damp.

We worked quickly, scouring the edge of the clearing for fallen branches and the few scraggly trees nearby for snags. We got lucky enough to find a large, fallen tree partway up the ridge. Lying down, it was taller than we were, even if we were lying on our sides. There wouldn't be much room, but it would be enough.

Kurt and I spent what was left of the daylight weaving branches together. Working together, we managed to make a pretty sturdy roof. I half wished we could take it with us for the rest of the journey, though it was impossible. It was a pain having to start over each time, wondering if you'd even find enough to make a decent shelter.

We hung around outside the lean-to. Neither one of us was too crazy about the idea of being closed up inside for the entire night, so we silently agreed to keep outside for as long as possible. The quiet finally got to him, I guess, because he cupped his mouth with his hands and called out, "OOOOOOORAHHHH!"

I was just giving him a smirk when we got a response. "OOOO." We waited. Nothing. And then, there it was. "RAHHH."

That didn't sound too good. Kurt frowned. "Who do you suppose that was?"

I shrugged as we both stumbled to our feet. I was feeling it now, the exertion of the day. Just miles and miles of walking, of looking for anything edible. I had to admit it was the part of class I'd paid the least attention to, and now I was regretting it, wondering if I'd passed up a regular wild smorgasbord at some point during the day. And we sure as hell hadn't come up on any water.

"OOORAH!" Kurt called again. We needed to figure out where exactly it was coming from.

"OOO." Again, it came out in two distinct syllables, as if there was some effort required. "RAHH."

And then I saw him. Wade. Farther up on the ridge, and to the north of us. The clearing was like the bottom of a giant bowl, if a bowl had grass in the bottom. We were pretty much surrounded on all sides by higher ground, and Wade was stumbling slowly south. He didn't look good. He was paler than normal, and he was sort of wobbly on his feet.

It was a good thing we reached him when we did, because he caught his foot on something and pitched forward. Lucky for him, I broke his fall and landed on my back under him in the grass. Aside from being winded, and aside from my back protesting where Kent had kicked me, I was okay.

"Wade?" I asked. He didn't move. Kurt rolled him off of me even as I started wriggling out from under him. I pressed my fingers to Wade's neck, looking for a pulse.

"Shit," Kurt said as I found it, weak and thready under my fingers, "he's bleeding pretty good."

So he was…all over my shirt. It was his nose. The guy got nosebleeds. I didn't know whether to be relieved or not as he came around. "Do you see him bleeding from anyplace else?" I asked Kurt as Wade blinked at me.

"Are you really there?" he asked me, blinking again.

"Yeah, we're really here."

His eyes welled up with tears. "Thank God," he said, wiping them away furiously. He looked embarrassed. "I thought I was losing my mind."

I chuckled. "Well," I said lightly to them both, "guess that's three down, one to go."

Wade shook his head, and his eyes welled up again. "Nah, man," he said softly, swallowing hard. "Paul is…Paul is…"

Shit. _Shit._ Kurt and I exchanged a look. I wondered if I looked vaguely ill like he did. No wonder Wade was all choked up.

"I—I found him this morning," he explained. "Looks like he fell down the mountain. I—" Wade sucked in a breath. "I think he broke his neck." He ripped open the pockets of his camo pants and dropped a pocket knife and two familiar lengths of rope on the ground. I wondered how he'd gotten hold of a knife, if it had come in the mail like Greg's. "This was all he had on him." Wade wiped his eyes again. I could tell he felt sort of bad about taking them, even though Paul had no use for them anymore.

We were all silent. I offered Wade a hand up the way Kurt had offered one to me. He seemed okay now, or better at least. Maybe it was just the stress of having to explain what he'd seen that had caused him to pass out. I put a hand on Wade's shoulder and gave it a pat.

"Well, I'm glad you're here," I said. He looked at me for a minute, and then he nodded.

"We've got a shelter set up, but we better hurry up and add a little more."

In unison, we all looked up at the sky. If I'd still had hair, it would have been blowing in my eyes in the wind that had kicked up. An ominous growling from the gray blanket overhead got us moving pretty quick.

By the time we ducked into the lean-to, though, we were all somewhat wet. It had started raining as we finished gathering boughs, and by the time we got them woven into the others, adding length to our makeshift wall, we'd been doused pretty good.

The only way we fit is by lying head to feet. Wade scooted in head first, next to the fallen tree, and Kurt slid in feet first next to him, which put me crawling in head first next to Kurt. It was tight, but we were reasonably dry. Kurt and I both had our pillowcases, but Wade had left his behind.

He'd covered Paul's surprised face with it.

* * *

A/N: Okay, so you've got some Darry POV. I'd like constructive feedback on it, as I am considering a rewrite for that part.


	12. Chapter 12

**Std disclaimer: I don't own anything about The Outsiders (book or movie, characters, TV scripts, or anything else)**

**

* * *

**

I pounded in the last nail at ten minutes to seven. The jobsite was deserted. Just me and my hammer. Every muscle in my body ached as I eased backward down the ladder and checked to make sure the crew had stowed all of our equipment. We didn't need another theft like last month. Murphy had nearly blown a fuse over that one, and he liked to threaten us all with our jobs for anything that went wrong, even if it wasn't our fault.

I scrawled a quick note to Murphy on the back of an old, wrinkled envelope that had been in the sun too long, sitting on the dash of my truck.

**_Murphy—_**

**_Roof is done. See you Monday._**

**_Thanks._**

**_Darrel Curtis_**

Soda was asleep on the couch when I got in. Must have been a light sleep, because he had his eyes open before the screen door banged shut.

"What time is it?" he asked drowsily.

"After seven," I answered. "Any news on Pony?"

Soda's eyes went stony as he remembered he was mad at me. "What do you care?" he shrugged.

That pushed a button, just like he'd figured it would. "Soda, don't start," I said, giving him my best cold stare. It doesn't work as well on him as it does on Pony, though. Still, he had the brains to look chastised. I headed to the bathroom to clean up, and Soda followed me.

"No. That Miller called a couple hours ago and said they'd called off the search for the night, and they'll start up again tomorrow morning."

"Did he say where, in particular, they're looking? Do they have any ideas?" I quickly sponged off most of the day's dirt and sweat. Soda just stared at his thumb, picking at a hangnail. It reminded me of Pony, except Pony would end up biting at it. Thinking of Pony made all the worry I'd managed to push aside on that roof come flooding back.

"No."

I sighed and toweled off. So, at best, Pony was stuck hunkering down somewhere in the middle of a thunderstorm. Probably drenched. Probably cold. Possibly scared to death. Maybe having those nightmares, with no one around to settle him down afterward. _Enough_, I told myself. _Knock it off. That isn't going to do him any good, anyway._

"Look, Soda," I said, dragging a clean t-shirt over my head, "first thing tomorrow we're on the road. Best thing we can do right now is prep for the trip. If we take drinks and food, we'll only have to stop for gas and the bathroom."

Soda's face brightened up a little. He was glad I was starting to take this as seriously as he was. Except he'd missed the fact that I'd _been _taking this as seriously as he was all along. I just couldn't lose the one thing we had left going for us, which was a decent paying job with a pretty decent boss. Not that the DX wasn't either of those things. It just didn't pay quite as much.

Soda was quiet, though, as we made thick ham and cheese sandwiches. Normally, he'd have been starting a food fight or chattering cheerfully on about something at work or something Two-Bit said. I wanted to try to cheer him up, because when Soda's unhappy, he's unhappy in a big, exaggerated way, almost a midnight blue, full scale depression. But that's Soda for you. No matter what it is he's doing, he's doing it with everything he's got, for as long as it can hold his limited attention span.

"Do you think he's okay, Darry?" he finally asked, after we silently assembled and wrapped about a half dozen sandwiches between us. I put them in the freezer.

"We should probably make two more for breakfast tomorrow morning," I said. Then, to answer his question, I shrugged. "And as for Pony…I don't know, Soda. I've been trying to figure that whole thing out all day. It just doesn't make sense. A place like that should be used to kids trying to run away."

"Pony didn't run away, Darry. I know it."

I met his eyes, and there wasn't even a hint of levity in them. Finally, I nodded. "I know. You're right."

He looked relieved. "Darry, _you_ were right. Pony knows he has to finish, or he'll be in worse trouble. That's how I know he wouldn't have left on his own. Someone took him out."

I'd been beating panic down all day thinking along that same track. There were five other guys in his barracks, though, and three of them went missing with Pony. What for? His letters made it clear that he and that Wade kid were up against the other four. Assuming one of the three others was Wade, that meant two of the guys with them were hostile. Why would they be missing, too? Try as I might, I couldn't figure it out.

I didn't like the idea of Ponyboy up against four guys, but the idea of two wasn't much better, seeing as how he'd told us more than once in his letters home that Wade wasn't going to do him any good. He wasn't bad in a fight. He could hold his own. But what if they'd all four ganged up on him? That would be tough for anyone, even me. And Soda was right about another thing. A lot of these guys were probably in worse trouble than Pony was, for committing far worse crimes than helping people who shouldn't have been helped to begin with.

I sent Soda to bed early. I don't normally send him much of anyplace, much less dictate a bed time for him, but he didn't argue because he knew that the quicker he went to sleep, if he could get to sleep, the quicker it would be daylight and we'd be on our way to New Mexico.

I lay in my own bed, staring up at the ceiling, until well after midnight. I wanted to think that Ponyboy was in that room down the hall next to Soda, still looking thirteen in the moonlight like I remembered.

Jesus, when I stopped and thought of all he'd been through in the last couple years… Some of it was his own fault, sure, but this last bit with the suitcases…that was mostly me, if I was honest with myself. I'd shut him out, shut him down. I'd watched him for those three days that Soda was gone, looking like he wanted to say something to me, desperate for me to say something to him, and I'd known exactly how much I was hurting him by freezing him out. And that seemed just as bad as hitting a guy. In fact, I might've done less damage if I'd just decked him like I wanted to when he'd first told me he'd been helping that con.

Dad always said I was too stubborn, too hot-headed...too impatient with people, not letting them make their own way. According to Dad, even when Soda and I were really little, before Pony was born, I was bossing Soda around, trying to get him to do things the way I thought they should be done. But I can't stand watching people fumble along when I know something that might help make things better. Pony did a lot of fumbling, and I knew a lot of things that could make his life easier if he'd just do what I said.

One of these days, if he kept finding trouble the way he does, it wouldn't end up alright like things seemed to so far. That isn't to say there wasn't damage. There was always damage. A little bit of Ponyboy died with Johnny. A little bit of his childhood, probably. A little bit of his trust and his hope. But he was enough of a dreamer that there was still plenty left, so I didn't worry too much once we woke him up and got him to accept the fact that Johnny was really gone.

And Ponyboy would never get rid of that ugly scar on his back. But it was my lesson learned this time. I had a lot of power over my brothers, but Ponyboy in particular. I knew I scared the hell out of him, and I used it to my advantage. That either made me a bastard or just a parent. I wasn't sure which. Some days I thought one way, some days I thought the other. Maybe it was always a little bit of both.

But more than his fear, Ponyboy wanted me to respect him, to think he was okay like I thought Soda was okay. It didn't take a genius to know that. I've seen his face before, that wistful look he gets whenever I make comments about how Soda is the one person I don't have to worry about. Even though that's bullshit. I worry about him, too. About the way he can't resist a smart remark, even if one day that's going to get him in big trouble. About the way he can't be serious for five minutes and the way he can't focus on anything long enough to finish anything he starts. I'm lucky Buck can handle his reckless spontaneity, otherwise I'm not sure Soda'd even have a job for long. It's a miracle he even shows up when he's supposed to.

Pony wants to be someone else, someone he thinks I will like better. That much is obvious. Some days I agree with him, wishing he was different, that he wouldn't take things so hard or see the world with as much faith as he does. It's a guaranteed way to get a guy beat down over and over again. It's a good way to see a good kid get twisted into something dark and hard. Like Dally. But then I realize how much I'd miss that Ponyboy, if he suddenly wasn't around anymore. Because sometimes a little of that dreamer, that idealist, rubs off and I catch myself hoping, too. Or I remember not to judge a person too fast because I'm seeing them the way Ponyboy does, as something complex, made up of more than just what is obvious to the eye. It backfires on Pony sometimes, though, like with Rossey. And that's when I lose my patience with him for not growing up, getting real, getting a clue. That's when I want to knock sense into him…when he doesn't see what's right in front of his face, what's obvious to everyone else but him.

What would the damage be this time? Would it be just one more invisible scar? Another reason for nightmares? Or would it be something more physical this time, like another concussion? Dr. Joseph had warned us that he might not recover as well if he ends up with another. I'm not sure he ever completely recovered from the first one. I can't imagine it getting any worse. I don't _want_ to imagine it getting any worse.

I was starting to feel like we were on borrowed time, like all of these awful things that had been happening were just the beginning of a horrible, inevitable end. No matter how hard I tried to put the brakes on or steer around it, the awful ending still approached, unavoidable and untouched. It was starting to feel like the world had it in for my kid brother. Try as he might, try as I might, try as Soda might, we couldn't any of us pull him out of that dark road, out from those bright, oncoming headlights and that blaring horn.

* * *

A/N: As always when I write Darry, it feels all wrong. Any constructive feedback would be appreciated. What would you change? Add? Delete?


	13. Chapter 13

**Std disclaimer: I don't own anything about The Outsiders (book or movie, characters, TV scripts, or anything else)**

I squinted at the clock by my bed. Then I angled it toward the window to see if a little moonlight would help. _1:45 a.m._ Sighing, I sat up on the edge of the bed. It was no use. I pulled on a clean pair of jeans and grabbed the black t-shirt off the closet doorknob, and then I went to wake up Soda.

* * *

"Jesus," Kurt said after the last deafening crack of thunder subsided.

We all lay awake in that lean-to, listening to the storm rage. The wind was pressing hard against our makeshift wall/roof. Rain dripped down on us like water torture, cold and constant.

"Hope this thing holds up," I said drowsily.

"Me, too," Wade said. "Except, you know, we should probably figure out a way to catch some of this rain water for drinking."

Short of just standing out in it with our mouths open, I wasn't sure how we were going to accomplish much, seeing as how we didn't have anything that could hold water. But Wade wiggled around until he got that knife out of his pocket and he sort of half sat up and started hacking at the fallen tree.

"Shoot. Bark's too crumbly," he said. "Sometimes you can get a good large piece, and if you rub the dull edge of a knife against it you can heat it up, make the curve deeper and bring up the sides a little. Pretty decent cup, if you're desperate."

I lifted my head. "Was that something we learned in class?" I wondered. Had I missed it?

"I've been camping before," Wade said.

Kurt snorted. "I _never _would have figured you for the camping type."

"I didn't say I _liked_ it," Wade countered. "My dad sends me on all that outward bound type crap. You'd think he'd have given up by now."

"You'd think," Kurt agreed.

"Well," Wade ignored his barbs and started wiggling out of the lean-to, "that only leaves one thing."

When he ducked back in, he was missing his boots.

"You've got to be kidding," I said.

"If you want water in the morning, you'd better do the same."

I shrugged and wiggled out just in time for a brilliant flash of lightning to halfway blind me. But I saw where Wade had put his boots, and I winced and hurried out of my own. Then I crawled back under the relative dry of our shelter. "Won't the lining just soak it all up?"

"Most of it," Wade agreed. "But a little is better than none at all."

Kurt sighed and did the same. He dove back in at the next crack of thunder. Wade snorted this time.

"Scared?"

"Shut up," Kurt told him. "I don't like thunder, so what?"

There was a long silence, and I thought maybe Wade had decided it was better not to respond.

"Thunder's just noise," Wade said sleepily. "It can't hurt you. If you were smart, you'd be more afraid of the lightning, 'cause it can fry your ass."

Kurt didn't answer, and Wade didn't say anything else. We just lay there head to feet to head and waited for dawn.

* * *

"Soda, did you tell Steve or Two-Bit what was going on?" Darry asked me as he tossed our sandwiches into a large paper sack.

"Steve dropped by after he got off at the DX and I told him about Pony," I said, skidding into the living room for my shoes. "He said he'd get the word out."

"I'm surprised we didn't see Two-Bit last night," Darry commented as he pulled a second thermos out of the cupboard. "Or Tim."

"Tim's on graveyard this week, remember?" I was surprised that _I _remembered. Keeping track of everybody was usually Darry's thing, and Darry didn't limit himself to me and Pony. He liked to know what everyone was up to. That way if we didn't see one of the guys for a while, we'd know it was time to find out what was going on. It was left over from Johnny, from trying to make sure his parents didn't hurt him so bad that he needed a hospital.

"Shoot," Darry said. "I was going to ask him to keep an eye on this place."

"Since when are you worried about anything we've got?"

He smirked at me. "I'm not. But he hates that little dump of his, so I figured he wouldn't mind an invitation to hang around here until we get back."

I grinned. Tim Shepard didn't want anything from anyone and wouldn't take it if it was offered, anyway. But Darry knew he wouldn't turn down a favor. "I could call Two-Bit, have him pass the word along."

Darry frowned. "I'd hate to wake his mom up."

It was too late. I'd already dialed and was waiting for someone to pick up. I flashed Darry a relieved grin when I heard Two-Bit's gravelly voice.

"'Lo?"

"Two-Bit, are you awake? I mean, are you gonna remember this later?"

"I'm gonna remember I need to whup Sodapop," he agreed, yawning loudly in my ear. "What's so important at two in the morning?"

"Pony's gone missing from that camp. Two days now," I said. "Three," I corrected, "if you count today. Me and Darry are headed to New Mexico to see what's going on."

Half asleep, Two-Bit said, "Okay. Call me later, and I'll pick you up."

"Two-Bit, we're leaving right now," I said again, waiting for him to realize I wasn't asking him to pick me up. "Are you in?"

"Sure, I'm in," he mumbled. I gave up.

"See you when we get back. Don't eat everything in our refrigerator," I told him, because that's what Darry would have said. "and tell Tim Darry asked him to watch our place, will you?"

He just grunted and hung up on me.

Darry almost laughed when I told him how out of it Two-Bit had been on the phone and how he thought I needed a ride to go find Ponyboy. But it was the middle of the night, and he was pouring coffee into the two thermoses he'd pulled down from the cupboard so that he could go looking for his kid brother, and I didn't guess he was in the mood to laugh. So he just looked sort of amused for a second before he yawned and twisted the cap on the first thermos.

I wondered what the place would look like, and if we'd get to see that Roster. Didn't seem like as much fun, though, if Pony wasn't there with us. This whole summer hadn't been much fun, except for that day at the rodeo while Darry was on his trip, which Darry still didn't know about.

I didn't let myself think about what might be happening to Pony. I'd spent all day on that sort of stuff, until all I wanted to do was curl up and sleep and wait for Darry to come home so I could convince him Pony didn't run away.

Darry slapped the cap on the last of the two thermoses and handed me one. I grabbed the sandwiches off the table and in another five minutes, we were rumbling toward the interstate.

* * *

Wednesday, July 12th.

That was my first thought after waking. It was like there was a calendar in my head, ticking off the days, wondering if they felt as excruciating to Darry and Soda as they did to me.

I was damp. I shivered as I rolled over onto my stomach and crawled out of our drippy shelter. The sky was still thick with clouds, and a fine mist fell around me. I saw our boots. Wade was right. Mine didn't have much water in it, and it tasted nasty. Like shoe. And foot. But that didn't stop me from drinking the equally small amount in the other one, and if I'd been a complete jackass, it wouldn't have stopped me from drinking from theirs, either, which tells you how thirsty I was.

Kurt crept out next, and he made a face when he saw me still holding my boot. I grinned as I watched him peer carefully into his own boots and chuckled at the way he tried a couple of times to bring one of them to his lips. He gagged after the first one, but he still drank from the second. He gagged again, though.

Wade surprised me again. He just swallowed the boot water down, and then he even pushed against the lining of his boots for a little more moisture. Kurt and I decided to hold out for the creek.

Putting our boots on again was pretty awful. It made our feet cold and wet, and the friction had us limping with near immediate blisters just in time for it to start raining in earnest. But we just shook our heads and kept walking. What else was there?

We made a little conversation. Dehydration or not, we were all half-crazy from the silence. It was Wade that started it, talking about food.

"Have you guys seen anything to eat out here?"

"What? Like a steak hanging from a tree?" Kurt shot back, irritated. He still didn't like Wade, and I wasn't sure he liked me much, either. But he seemed to tolerate me better, that's for sure.

"Yeah," Wade joked, ignoring Kurt's sarcasm. "Haven't you ever seen a cow tree?"

I laughed. He surprised me sometimes. Like his idea to use our boots to get water. And that bark thing. You'd think if a guy knew that kind of stuff, he'd be better at the whole camp thing. But I had to reach out to steady him several times as we slogged along in our mushy boots, as he tripped over one tree root or rock or another. If Darry thought I was a klutz, he should see Wade. He'd quit sneering at me about my lack of grace, that's for sure.

"I wouldn't mind a pizza tree right about now," I said. My stomach didn't even bother to growl anymore. It seemed to know there was nothing forthcoming. My mouth didn't, though. It watered up a little at the talk of food.

Kurt groaned. "Man, that's what I want more than anything. A good slice of pie from Gianetti's. It's a dive, but they make the best pizza anywhere."

"Pepsi," I said, and my mouth grew a little wetter.

"Beer," Wade said. And then he added, "Root beer," when Kurt and I shot him shocked looks.

"Figures," Kurt said under his breath. And then, louder, he said, "A snickers bar."

"Hershey's," I countered. I preferred my chocolate plain, without all the gunk.

"Cracker Jack," Wade offered. Guess he didn't like chocolate much.

Shit, I was getting hungry. I found myself telling them about Sodapop, and how cooking was always an adventure with him. They both laughed at the idea of chicken with chocolate syrup (he'd heard about this Mexican sauce called Mole, but, in true Soda fashion, hadn't bothered to learn anything else about it) and grape jelly-flavored spaghetti sauce. Wade wondered how it was that I wasn't skinnier than he was, if that's what food was like at my place. Kurt just sneered that it was no wonder I didn't seem to mind drinking from a shoe.

In another little while, it stopped raining. The clouds started to thin out a little, and the sun poked a few fingers through. I guess the guys stopped to look at the sky, because when I hit the top of the ridge at last, and I looked down at the world below, they weren't beside me.

"Hallelujah!" I cried, almost ready to start bawling at the sight of the Stovepipe, though it was definitely still a ways off. But I was even more excited to see the unmistakable glint of sunlight on water.

The creek.

They scrambled up in pretty quick order, and we stood there feeling giddy at the thought of all that water. I took a step forward and the soil, saturated with too much rain, gave way beneath my foot. And then I fell.


	14. Chapter 14

**Std disclaimer: I don't own anything about The Outsiders (book or movie, characters, TV scripts, or anything else)**

**

* * *

**

When I finally thudded to a stop, I just stayed where I was and breathed and felt the wild slamming of my heart against my chest. You ever have so much fear pumping through you that you don't even notice anything else at first? That was me, on my back in the mud, staring up the ridge, trying to find Wade or Kurt.

My first thought, in that weird moment when you begin to fall but haven't hit yet, was, _I wonder if this was what it was like for Paul._ And then, of course, you are just falling and the rough impact of bits of twig and rock poking at you as you slam your way down takes up all the thoughts in your head.

Now the pain set in. I moved my left foot, left leg. I moved my right foot and—OW! My right knee was messed up. I curled around and cradled it with my muddy hands before I could think to carefully check out everything else. Good news was that the wet earth had been a lot more forgiving toward me than it had for Paul. Bad news was that I still felt a thousand little fiery licks of pain and throbbing places.

Kurt must have thought I needed a laugh, because I heard his voice even though I couldn't see him. "Oooorah, Curtis!!"

I choked out one laugh, and then that rib I had thought Kent had broken twinged, so I stopped. But I let out a quick, sharp, "OORAH!" so they'd know I was alive. Then I just looked up at the sky and waited for all the little throbbing scrapes, cuts, and bruises to settle in and become a part of my body, like they were weekend visitors or something.

The knee, though. The other little aches and pains would pass quickly, but the knee was going to be a problem. I didn't think I'd broken anything, but I'd probably sprained my knee. That was going to make the walk so much more fun. Because it was a barrel of laughs already, with my feet all blistered up. And all because of a little rain water, which seemed like a waste now that the creek was in sight.

I heard the two of them making progress, and they called to me again, so I called back. Then I pulled myself up into a sitting position, figuring they might be pretty scared if I was still just lying there. There was a scraggly tree not too far off, so I rose carefully and tested out my leg. I limped heavily, and my knee complained in sharp, stabbing pains, but I made it to the tree.

I sat back down and ripped open the pocket of my camo pants. I could see Wade and Kurt now, making their way carefully down the ridge. I thought it was pretty stupid of Kurt to leave Wade behind him. If Wade lost his balance, he'd tumble into Kurt like a bowling ball into a pin, and they'd both go down.

Kurt, of course, reached me first. He panted down at me, squinting, and asked, "You okay, Curtis?"

I grinned wryly. "Never better." I tried to pull that pillowcase apart at the seams, but it was sturdy and strong. Kurt tried next, and he couldn't do it, either.

"Jesus," he said, handing it back to me, "might as well be sewed up with catgut."

He shrugged and sat down beside me. "You gonna be able to walk the rest of this?"

"I don't see where there's a choice," I shrugged, too. "I can't see _you_ carrying my ass back, much less Wade."

Kurt chuckled. "Just so we're clear," he said. We watched Wade make it to the bottom of the ridge and begin picking his way over to us. He caught his foot on something and pitched forward, but he caught himself.

No, I definitely couldn't see him getting either one of us back to camp. Kurt and I got to our feet, and I limped over toward Wade.

"Let me borrow that knife," I said, and Wade fished it out without asking any questions. I used it to start a tear in the seams at both sides of the pillowcase. After that, I was able to rip it apart with no trouble. I folded one half over and tied it around my knee for a little extra support, and then I rolled the other half back up and stowed it in my camo pocket.

Wade nodded. "Good idea." After resting for a minute, he tipped his chin toward my leg. "Hurt a lot?"

I shrugged. "What difference does it make? I've gotta walk on it whether it does or whether it doesn't."

With that, I led the way toward the creek.

* * *

Darry yawned again. The coffee seemed to help, though, so I kept him in caffeine through daybreak. Then we ran out.

"That's it," I said, stifling a yawn of my own. I thought maybe if I didn't yawn, he wouldn't notice how tired he was. "We'd better find a truck stop or something, get some more coffee."

Darry nodded. "Sure wish this rain would let up," he said. I knew he was wishing it for Pony's sake and not ours. It had been raining since right before we crossed over the state line into New Mexico.

"How much longer, do you think?" I asked, trying to remember what the last sign had said. We'd been pushing our luck all night. Darry'd been doing eighty more than a few times before he caught himself and slowed down, saying last thing we needed was to get pulled over for speeding. I wondered what Ponyboy was doing, if he was okay.

I cracked the window to see what it felt like outside, and it was cold. Wet and cold. I wondered what Ponyboy was wearing when he'd disappeared, whether it was enough. If Dally hadn't given him some clothes that time he ran away with Johnny, he'd probably have frozen to death.

Darry yawned again, and as we passed a sign that said, _Raton, NM 86 miles_, he said, "I guess about an hour and a half."

"Unless you do eighty again," I teased.

"Speed limit's 55," Darry replied dryly.

"I know it, but we're almost there," I pleaded. If I had to sit in this truck much longer, I was gonna go nuts. Or I was gonna make Darry nuts.

"Soda, I want to get there as much as you do. But the last thing we need is trouble with the highway patrol."

Another sign came up, this one for a town called Clayton. It warned us it was our last chance for gas for 44 miles. Darry saw it, too, and he sat up a little straighter. It would be nice to get out of the pickup, but I just wished we were getting out at the camp instead of another truck stop. We needed gas, though, since Darry had skipped the last few chances.

"Soda," he said as we slid out of the pickup, "see if you can get the waitress to fill these." He handed me the thermoses.

The waitress was used to thermoses, but she wasn't used to guys like me. Most of the truckers were old and fat. I could see that just by looking around. She was older than me but still pretty. She looked tired, though, and she smiled sleepily at me when I gave her my best charming grin and asked if she was off soon.

"I've got another hour," she said regretfully, and slid the thermoses across the counter. "Where y'all from?"

I checked over my shoulder and saw Darry headed our way from the bathroom. "Tulsa," I said, checking to make sure she'd put the caps on tight. She had.

Her eyes widened a little as Darry clapped me on the shoulder. "Ready?" he asked.

She smiled at me again. "They sure grow them handsome in Oklahoma," she flirted. I grinned.

"Darry," I said, sliding my eyes to her name tag. "Keep Patti company. I'll be right back."

I'd planned to say goodbye to Patti, but Darry headed me off outside the restrooms. I tossed a regretful glance back toward the counter and followed him out to the truck. Still raining. But it looked like there was a little bit of clearing to the west, and that cheered me up some. Maybe it would clear off. I hoped for it to get nice and hot outside so that Ponyboy would be warm. And then I used some coffee, even though I hate coffee, to swallow down the lump that had been in my throat ever since that Miller had called to say Pony was gone.

* * *

We were damp and sticky. I was filthy, what with Wade's blood and all that mud from my trip down the south side of the slope caked on my RCJMC shirt. The only good thing about it was all that mess pretty well covered up those hated letters. But I sure wanted a bath, any kind of food I could get my hands on, and something other than boot water.

When we finally reached the creek, even Kurt joined us in the OORAH. And then he fell on the bank in gratitude and shoved his hands in. I just barely remembered my knee in time to keep from doing the same thing, and I eased down a little more carefully than he had. Wade, meanwhile, also dove heartily in with both hands.

Once we'd had our fill to drink (it wasn't bad, though it tasted a little metallic and silty) I ducked out of my shirt and tried to wash out the worst of the mess. It probably wasn't the best idea, seeing as how it was still pretty cool out, but I figured feeling cleaner would be worth a few goosebumps. Now that the sun was out, and the clouds were sliding away to the south, I figured I'd be alright.

"How much farther do you think that is?" Kurt nodded.

We were just about to go uphill again, into the northern foothills of the Stovepipe. It would take too long to skirt around them to get to the southern foothills, which would lead to the lake. So we were going to have to climb over. I worried about Wade. Last thing we needed was him tripping and taking a bad fall. The ground was drying out now, and these red rocks weren't the same sort of soil as what I'd fallen in.

I knew we had been in Colorado, just like I knew we were back in New Mexico. The camp was about ten miles south of the Stovepipe, and the Stovepipe was practically in Colorado. The creek was just about to widen up into a river. And that river would dump into our lake, the lake we did our "footballs" in. We were so close I could almost cry.

"Hey," Kurt said, jostling me. "How much farther?" he asked again.

"Maybe fifteen miles," I shrugged. I wasn't sure how big the northern foothills were. But this was fixing to be the worst part.

Wade, Kurt, and I stood looking up at the Pipe for a good five minutes, each of us lost in our own thoughts. I wondered if they were as scared as I was. We had no real gear, and we were about to scale a small part of an enormous mountain. I hadn't done much in the way of climbing before.

We talked about taking the longer way around, which Wade guessed might actually double our trip. That was enough to decide for Kurt, and me, too, though I didn't admit it.

"I say we climb," Kurt said, and started making his way up the gentle slope, a slope which promised to get tougher. Wordlessly, I followed. We didn't give Wade a voice, fearing he'd crush our hopes with his answer.

* * *


	15. Chapter 15

**Std disclaimer: I don't own anything about The Outsiders (book or movie, characters, TV scripts, or anything else)**

**

* * *

**

We pulled up to the gates at the Raton City Juvenile Military Camp at just after noon. I thought Soda would leap out of the truck and run through them, he was so jumpy. But he just bounced on the seat a little as I showed my driver's license to the guard and told him I needed to see someone about my brother.

"Sir, we've been expecting you," the guard said and handed me back my license. "Pull up inside the gate and make the first right. You can park behind that building. I'll have someone meet you there shortly. Please remain in your vehicle until you're cleared to step out."

I exchanged a look with Soda as we eased in the gates. I glanced in the rearview mirror and watched them close again. It was not quite what I had expected. There was barbed wire on the fencing, but I'd somehow pictured something more menacing. This looked a little bit like a school and a little bit like what I pictured a regular summer camp to look like, with log cabins and rustic buildings.

Even Soda was subdued as I cut the motor and waited for someone to come for us as promised. I'd called the camp from that last stop in Clayton while Soda flirted with the counter girl. I hadn't known quite what to say because Soda had just been referring to a "Miller guy", so I felt pretty stupid telling the woman who answered that I was looking for a guy by the name of Miller, who had called to tell me my brother was missing. Still, she knew exactly who I meant and advised me she'd have to take a message for Sergeant Miller, as he was not available at the moment. So I'd told her to tell him we'd be there in about an hour.

Either all the caffeine Soda had been feeding me was kicking in, or the fact that we were in New Mexico to look for Ponyboy was finally sinking in. I felt tight and tense, like I get before a fight: coiled, on edge, and…angry. I was angry. Worry, I had been through. Scared, well, like I said, I was always scared somewhere deep down, at least when it came to my brothers. But now anger took hold. Why hadn't they found him yet? Why was he gone in the first place? What had really been going on here?

Finally, Soda couldn't take it anymore and went for the door handle. I reached over and stopped him. "You heard the guard, Soda. Someone's coming for us."

"Then how come he ain't here yet?" He jerked his arm out of my grip angrily. "Darry, I can't believe you're just sitting here like this, just waiting politely for these jerks to come and get us! They're the ones that made this whole mess!"

"Soda," I began, but then we both saw a guy dressed in head to toe camouflage and mirrored glasses pull up in a utility cart and park next to us. He came over to my door, removing his sunglasses.

"Mr. Curtis?" he asked, holding out a hand. I shook his hand warily. "I'm Sergeant Thomas Alexander Miller. I think I spoke with you on the phone."

I shook my head. "No, sir, that was my brother. I'm Darrel Curtis, and this is my brother, Sodapop." It didn't happen all that often anymore, but I felt silly saying my own brother's name. There was a time, back in school, when I hated saying either of my brothers' names, and I would sometimes call them by their middle names, instead. In a place like this, Sodapop just sounded ridiculous. But it made me feel guilty just thinking it, like I'd spit in my parents' faces.

Sergeant Miller didn't react to the name, which made me feel worse instead of better. He just shook Soda's hand and asked if we brought anything with us. Dutifully, we each grabbed a duffle from underneath the tarp in the back of the truck.

He took them from us and set them in the short, flat bed of the utility truck. It sort of resembled a cross between a Jeep and a golf cart. He unzipped mine and began removing the contents. I looked at Soda and Soda looked at me. He caught us at it and offered an apologetic smile. "I'm sorry, gentlemen," he said. "We have to be really careful about what gets brought in here."

I watched him paw through our things for as long as I could stand it. "Sergeant Miller, has Ponyboy been found yet?"

He straightened. "He has not," Miller replied in that formal way that guys in the military always seemed to speak. "I know that he's your primary concern right now, and he and the others are ours, as well. If you can bear with me for just another few minutes, we'll bring you up to speed on what we know so far."

I looked at him, and he looked at me. Nothing. Not anger or guilt or sympathy. Just a face of stone, firmly but politely set. I didn't know whether to feel relieved that he wasn't in a panic or whether to beat the living tar out of him until he acted like he gave a shit.

He finished checking our duffels for knives and other sharp objects and carefully returned the contents to their places, zipping up the bags neatly. "Gentlemen, if you will please place your hands on the side of the truck and place your feet at shoulder width, I will ensure you aren't carrying weapons on your persons and we can proceed to headquarters."

I stared at him. He had to be joking. But he just stood there, his own feet slightly apart, his hands behind his back, and waited. I didn't want to argue, even though it seemed ridiculous. I just wanted to get on with finding out about Pony, but Soda couldn't keep his mouth shut.

"We don't have anything like that! I ain't gonna stand here and have you frisking us like a couple of criminals when we didn't do anything!"

"Gentlemen, when I set foot on these grounds for twelve weeks each summer, I myself am subjected to the same search," he spoke as though reading from a script. I guess he'd heard our objections before. "It isn't about either of you. It's about our young men, and the safety of these young men and our staff. Please, gentlemen." He gestured to my truck and just waited again.

"C'mon, Soda," I said, frowning. "The faster we get this over with, the faster we find out what the hell's been going on in this place."

Soda liked the sound of that, because he rolled his eyes and we assumed the position. A quick pat down later, Miller had us get into the cart and we rolled slowly onward.

* * *

"At first," Kurt said, breaking the long silence we'd held as we climbed slowly up the mountain, "I thought maybe this was like the Crucible, only camp style."

Wade, who was keeping up with me pretty good, seeing as how my knee was slowing down, lifted his head to squint up at Kurt. "The Crucible?" he asked. "What's that?"

I thought he was talking about _The Crucible_, which was a play about the Salem witch trials. We'd read it in my history class last year.

"It's this test at the end of basic training," Kurt huffed, winding his way up the Pipe. It was getting tougher now. The slope was steep and the obvious ledges were growing smaller. If we didn't make it to the top soon, I thought I might not make it at all. "My brother's a Marine," he added, pausing to look down at us. "You get water and a couple MRE's and you march something like 40 miles in 54 hours on four hours of sleep a night. There's a lot more to it, but it sounds pretty brutal. I thought maybe this was some sort of test."

I wanted to say it _was _a test, except if you passed, you got to live. If you failed, well…you ended up like Paul. But clinging to the side of a mountain the way we were, nobody needed to be reminded of that.

Wade just grunted and pulled himself up next to me as I found a large, flat table on the rocks. "It doesn't sound too much different than what we're doing, if you just take away the food and water." After a short pause he said, "I wonder if that makes us as good as real Marines."

"It better," Kurt called over his shoulder.

"Oorah," I agreed, knowing it would make him grin, even if I couldn't see him. He was still amused whenever I said it, though I wasn't sure exactly why.

"Hey," he said, peering down at us again. "There's a good spot up here for sitting. Room for all of us," he said. "Looks like a couple of those piñon pines you were talking about, Curtis."

Wade and I hauled ourselves up after him. Sure enough, we'd reached a narrow mesa, dotted with piñons. I poked around in one and came up with only a few young pine nuts. They weren't really ready to eat, and they were impossible to shell at this stage. They didn't become truly edible until late August if not early September, but we were hungry enough not to care. They wouldn't harm us, they just tasted pretty foul in their not-quite-ripe enough state. There were also too few to really get any kind of a meal, but we figured something was better than nothing. We'd all been feeling pretty woozy from hunger, which is the one thing you don't want to feel when you're climbing up a mountain.

"What makes you so sure this isn't a sort of Crucible?" Wade asked suddenly, after we'd finished trying to eat the bitter nuts.

"Well, it would be everyone, wouldn't it? Not just us," Kurt said.

"And they wouldn't leave us completely alone out here," I added, nodding. "There'd be some drill sergeant hanging around someplace." And then I said what Kurt wouldn't. "And Paul."

Wade nodded. "Guess you're right."

"It _is _a Crucible," I said then, retying the piece of pillowcase that was adding support for my knee. "It's just not anything the camp intended to put us on. It's Kent's Crucible."

"Man, I hate that guy," Kurt said. "He's probably got everyone believing we took off together, like we planned this whole thing."

I hoped not. I really, really hoped not. I couldn't stand it if I got into more trouble. I knew Soda would always be on my side, but I wondered if Darry would believe me, or if he'd think I just couldn't take it anymore and ran off. Again. No. No, I think he'd believe me if I told him. My brothers are the one thing I can always count on.


	16. Chapter 16

**Std disclaimer: I don't own anything about The Outsiders (book or movie, characters, TV scripts, or anything else)**

**

* * *

**

It was strange, driving through the place in that cart with Sgt. Miller, seeing the other campers just going about their day. We saw some guys marching in the mowed field between all the buildings. Miller said the back buildings we were seeing on either side of the guys were the barracks, and that Ponyboy's barracks, Red Flag, was the farthest one out in the distance on the right side. The front buildings were the classrooms and the chow hall, and the buildings to the other side of the cart were the administrative areas.

Soda watched it all with a quiet fascination I didn't even know he was capable of. You couldn't ask him not to be intrigued. It wasn't that he didn't care about Pony. He hadn't forgotten why we were here. I could feel him beside me, tense and barely contained. It wouldn't take much for him to go off on somebody if the wrong words were said. Hell, I didn't suppose it would take much for me, either. But he was Soda, and there was too much to look at, and he had too many questions. He wouldn't be able to maintain his silence for much longer, but for now, he just watched and drank everything in.

We stopped in front of a very official looking building, flanked by two flagpoles. Old Glory flew on one, and the other had two flags. One of them, I figured, was the New Mexico state flag, and the other looked military. Flat topped hedges squatted below the windows on either side of the glass double doors. They were precise and perfect. There was no trash blowing around, and nothing was overgrown.

Sgt. Miller held the door for us. I felt my heartbeat accelerate. Finally, we were about to hear what had been happening, and I wasn't sure I wanted to know. Not if it meant hearing anything other than they'd found my brother and he was okay. Most of all, I really wanted someone to tell me that he didn't have anything to do with his own disappearance. Soda had been steadfast that he hadn't, and I mostly believed him, but I suppose if I didn't _completely _believe him, it meant nothing. I hated doubting my own brother, wondering if he'd gone off in a temper and gotten lost. But being here, in this place, I was even closer to understanding that he hadn't. The whole thing just felt wrong.

They had the gates and the guards, after all. We'd seen just how far reaching the walls were as we were driving up. Those walls went on for miles, stretching long past the buildings. I imagined the whole place was contained. It would have to be, if they wanted to keep the guys in. But then, if one got out, there had to be a breach somewhere.

As soon as we stepped inside the headquarters building, even my thoughts went silent. It felt a little bit like being in church. Solemn. Serious. You don't fool around, you don't think about your own things. You pay attention, and you listen hard for the truth. Even Soda felt it. He was quiet as I'd ever seen him. Even his body was quiet. No fidgeting.

Sgt. Miller led us to a closed wood door. He knocked twice, and it echoed in the empty hall. When it swung open, I saw a room already full of people, and they looked at me and Soda as if we were late. We took two of the last three empty chairs around the long conference table.

"Ladies," Miller said, "Gentlemen, these are Lance Corporal Curtis' brothers, Darrel and Sodapop. Gentlemen," he said to us, "To my left is Colonel Messner, camp director. To his left, Mr. and Mrs. Puzo, parents of Private Paul Puzo; and Mr. and Mrs. Slozack, parents of Private Kurt Slozack."

I wondered where that skinny kid's parents were, but Soda wondered the same thing out loud.

"Private Milsap's parents are presently making their way back from outside the country. We expect them in tomorrow," Miller said.

With the introductions over, Colonel Messner leaned forward and began to speak.

"As marines, we pride ourselves on strength and honor, and I want to be the first to tell you that we are disgraced by situation. While we do not have a confession, we have reason to believe that your young men were taken against their will by Drill Sergeant Kent, the officer in charge of their barracks. We do not currently know the motive for this action, but we believe he was aided by two of the other young men from the barracks, Privates First Class Cicarello and Devon. They have refused to answer questions regarding the whereabouts of their fellow barracks mates, and they were removed from the premises this morning and put into the custody of the Colfax County Sheriff's Office. Because they are minors, we're forced to wait until their parents and their parents' lawyers become involved. We're hoping to question them further with the help of the sheriff's office, but for now, we are unable to proceed in that area." Colonel Messner drew a deep breath. It was just the opening that the other parents needed.

"What are you doing to find our son?" Mr. Puzo asked. He was a short, dark man with sharp little eyes and a pointy nose. I imagined even the Colonel felt a little intimidated when Puzo gave him a look that could bend steel.

"We've also been questioning Drill Sergent Kent. He has not acknowledged any involvement. He maintains that he'd heard rumors that your young men were planning to escape to the southeast and make their way to the highway. In another unfortunate incident unrelated to this one, we had a young man attempt that very thing. He was picked up and brought back to camp by two of our staff sergeants. After that incident, we increased security. We don't feel it is likely that it would have been possible for these four young men to recreate that escape."

"What other reason do you have, then, to believe they were kidnapped?" Mrs. Slozack asked, her hands flying rapidly as she spoke. Then I noticed how Mr. Slozack watched her carefully, and I realized he was deaf.

"We have conflicting accounts. The young man on fire watch says that a transport left the property at just before midnight. The men staffing the front gates say there was no traffic after nine p.m." Colonel Messner steepled his hands. "A review of the vehicle maintenance logs shows a discrepancy in the amount of fuel in one of our trucks, which makes us inclined to agree with the young man on fire watch. Someone left this property."

"But what are you doing to _find _our son?" Mr. Puzo asked again, slapping his hand on the table.

"Our search began and continues to the southeast."

"Based on what?" I asked, irritated. "You're searching an area that this Kent guy tells you a rumor about, but if he had something to do with it, don't you think he might point you in the wrong direction?"

"We've considered that," Colonel Messner agreed. "We've widened our search to the southwest as well."

"What about the north?" Mrs. Slozack asked. Mr. Slozack nodded and gestured. "Is it possible our boys were taken across state lines into Colorado?"

Messner's mouth tightened into a straight line. His thin lips virtually disappeared until he had no mouth at all. The more questions we had, the more we pushed for someone to consider the north, the more excuses he gave. It was rough terrain, and if the guys _did_ take off on their own, the south would be easier. Kent would be unlikely to cross state lines due to the potential consequences. It went on and on.

Finally, Messner held up a hand and said, " Folks, we understand your concerns. Unfortunately, I cannot answer any more questions at this time, as I'm expected on a conference call with the search team leaders in the next fifteen minutes. For the time being, I have to ask that you understand we're not going to rest until we locate your young men. If you will please excuse me, Drill Sergeant Miller will see that you are well taken care of."

The stupid coward ducked out, leaving Miller holding the bag. If Miller was unnerved by that, he didn't show it. He kept that same stoic face as he explained the next steps.

"Your comfort in this difficult time is our next priority," he stated with a sincerity that didn't show on his face. "Colonel Messner has advised that you are welcome to take up temporary residence on the premises. We have some quarters ready for you if you desire. Alternately, we have arranged for your comfort at a nearby hotel, courtesy of the Raton City Juvenile Military Camp. We will keep you informed of all developments, and we will cover all of your costs until such time as the matter is settled."

The Puzos and the Slozacks opted for a hotel. Soda said he wanted to be here, right here, when Ponyboy got back. I agreed. After Sgt. Miller gave the other parents their vouchers, he stood with us outside the headquarters building.

"Gentlemen," he said, putting his sunglasses back on, "if you'll get your bags and follow me, I'll take you to your quarters."

"Can we see Red Flag?" Soda asked suddenly. Miller just looked at him.

"I thought you might ask," he said, after a long moment. He seemed to be thinking about something. Finally, he pocketed his keys, and he said, "Follow me."

* * *

I took the lead coming off of the mesa. We were pretty close to the top of the northern face of the Pipe. But the obvious path was getting hard to see. There was still just enough of a slope to make progress upward. Good thing, too, because the thought of having to go back down the way we came and work our way _around _the mountain was not a pleasant one.

But I was careful now, finding a place for each foot and hand. We had no ropes, and if one of us fell, well, best of luck to the guy. I flattened myself against the wall of red and tried not to look down. The perpendicular on the Roster hadn't bothered me, even though I'd had no safety net there, either. But a rope was a lot easier to hold on to. Still, it looked to be less of a climb than getting to top deck at this point, so I was grateful for that.

When I made it to that last ledge, the one that was a resting place before coming down the south face of the Pipe, I felt a quick rush of exhilaration and relief. My knee ached from the pushing upward, but I ignored it and just looked down at the valley below, following the river as it spilled into the lake in the distance. Just about ten miles to go, once we got down off the Stovepipe. I sighed longingly. The thought of food, of a shower, of a good sleep uninterrupted by the odd symphony of the outdoors and cold water droplets plunking down on me every few seconds…that was as close as I figured I could get to heaven for now. I wondered again if Darry and Soda would be there and whether they had any idea I was even gone. They had to by now, didn't they?

Kurt had come to stand beside me. "We're close now," he said, looking down with me. "Jesus, we're really going to make it," he added, with a note of disbelief in his voice.

"Don't jinx us," I warned. "We've still got to get down off this thing."

"Yeah," he agreed, "but after that, it will be cake."

I hoped those wouldn't be famous last words.

It was late, late afternoon, and the sky was pretty clear. It was a good thing, too, because the southern foothills didn't offer much by way of trees, so there'd be no building a lean-to if the weather got bad. I knew we'd be spending one more night outside. By the time we got down the mountain, it would be growing too dark to walk the other ten miles back to camp. _If _we got down the mountain. I was starting to worry that we'd still be clinging to the south face at dark fall, and then where would we be?

I expected Kurt to lead, but he gestured to me to go ahead, and then, surprisingly, he gestured to Wade to follow me. I wasn't all that eager to forge the trail, though, and I guess he wasn't, either. It was nerve wracking, placing each foot carefully, waiting to see if anything gave way underneath. Slowly transferring just a little more of myself forward. But it was a smart strategy, because my foot slipped more than once, and if I'd been gung ho I'd have been gung ho-ing all the way down the mountain. Somehow, I doubted it would be as forgiving as the ridge had been.

We hit another narrow ledge, and I was grateful for the brief respite from the careful downward trend. I followed it slowly but more confidently than when I was stepping down until it curved a little and—

Wade slammed into my back and nearly sent me over the edge. Somehow, despite his usual clumsiness, he managed to snatch me back by my shirt. But he was gasping and I felt him shake.

"Jesus," I rasped, staring down at the sheer drop with a deep dread that was only second to my disappointment. We'd come all this way…all this way, and we'd have to go back.

"You gotta be kidding me," Kurt said, when he leaned out a little and saw what Wade and I were looking at.

"Maybe we can jump," Wade suggested.

Kurt and I looked at him like he'd dropped down from Mars. What? _Jump??_ I felt like checking his temperature because he'd surely gone out of his mind from hunger or exhaustion or God knows what else. But the idea grew on me, compared to the idea of going back. No, it was stupid. Especially with my knee. But really, it didn't look that far. Was _I _crazy? I had to be, to even consider that.

"Guys," Kurt said, "you're both crazy if you're even thinking about that. I'm not saying we couldn't make the jump, but what if the ledge won't hold?"

Yeah. There was that.

"And why the hell are you even suggesting it, Milsap? You'll trip over your own feet and you'll break your skinny neck!" Kurt was shouting now as he realized Wade and I were still studying the possibilities. "Curtis, you think you're going to do any better with that knee?"

He had a point. I wasn't sure I could walk much farther, let alone run. But I also doubted I'd ever make it down the mountain if it meant going back the way we'd come. So I took a deep breath and said,

"Back up, guys."

"No," Kurt said. And since he was bringing up the rear, we were stuck unless he decided to move.

"Kurt, look," Wade said, "there's three of us standing here, and the ledge is holding. The other side looks about like this one. Wider, even."

Kurt was silent for a long moment. Finally, he sighed. "Do what you want, man," he said, backing up. "It's your funeral. Say 'hey' to Paul when you see him."

Wade surprised me yet again when he whipped around and grabbed Kurt by the throat. "Show some respect," he said, his voice lower and more dangerous than I ever thought he was capable of. And then, just as quick, he let Kurt go. Kurt was too shocked to reply.

The silence as I stood there contemplating the boneheaded thing I was about to do almost hurt my ears. If Darry was here he'd burst a vein hollering at me for being so damn stupid. But in the next instant, I was in motion, charging the edge. And when I landed on the other side, Wade whooped and followed before I could even get ready for him.

Kurt stood there. He wasn't looking good. He was sort of green, actually. I realized then that he was afraid of heights. He looked down into that gap like it was a snake about to bite him. His voice shook as he said, "Guys, I don't know…"

I didn't know what else to do. Maybe it was cruel. Maybe I was a heartless jerk, but I just didn't have the patience for it, or maybe I was afraid we'd have to jump back and head back around to the north face. "Kurt," I barked across the chasm, "if you don't jump in the next five seconds, I'm gonna come back over there and throw your damn ass off this mountain! This way, you at least have a chance!"

He took a few deep breaths and leapt. All I could think as he hit the very edge of the ledge and it gave way was that I'd signed his death warrant. His eyes went wide as my hand shot out and caught his arm. It happened so fast I didn't have time to register Wade's arm around my waist, tugging backward. But when we landed in a heap, one on top of another, with Wade squashed underneath us both, Kurt choked out an oath.

"Oofuckingrah!" he gasped. And then he rolled off of me and sat on the ledge and sobbed. I just put my hand on the back of his neck and squeezed gently.

"Oorah is right," I said quietly.

He started laughing then, wiping his eyes. It was a crazy, wild laugh that pulled Wade and I in with it. And we sat there, not looking down, laughing like a bunch of loons.


	17. Chapter 17

**Std disclaimer: I don't own anything about The Outsiders (book or movie, characters, TV scripts, or anything else)**

**

* * *

**

When our hysterical laughter finally subsided, the three of us sat on that ledge shoulder to shoulder. I felt us all still shaking. I wasn't ready to resume the downhill climb yet, but Wade said,

"We'd better get moving. It'll be getting dark soon."

Kurt nodded and rose. He was a little unsteady, but he offered me a hand. When he saw me wince, he just said, "That's what you get, you sonofabitch. I hope that knee hurts you all the way down." But he grinned when he said it, so I knew he was at least partly joking.

I grinned back. "Better than taking the long way around."

He looked down nervously. I was surprised I hadn't noticed it before, the way his face looked whenever he looked down. Sort of pinched. Held in. "We'll see about that," he said.

But in the end, we picked our way down with only a couple of slight skids on loose rock, and we were able to correct ourselves before tumbling downward out of control. When the worst was behind us and we were coming down the last gentle slopes of the southern foothills, Kurt dropped to his knees in the twilight and pretended to kiss the ground.

Wade jogged over to the river's edge and practically put his whole head in. I followed, letting Kurt have his moment of gratitude. The water was cool and sweeter than it had been upstream, or maybe I was just thirstier after the climb. My stomach rumbled and gnawed fiercely. It was the price paid for eating those piñon nuts earlier…my stomach started thinking food might be a regular thing again. I patted it regretfully and rode out that horrible, biting emptiness. I had no other choice.

I watched Wade as he wandered around, looking for a good place to settle down for the night. It was strange the way he had his moments of grace, as though everything locked into just the right place for a brief time before falling out of alignment again. Or maybe he was finally turning into that man his father wanted. The one his parents were paying for. I wasn't sure which, but I puzzled over him as he shouted to us from the south in a place where a few pines resumed dotting the landscape. By the time we got back to camp, they'd be thick again.

It almost seemed unreal. I had no idea how far we'd actually come, since I had no idea how far we'd actually been dropped. But it was nothing short of a miracle that we'd made it this far, most of us still in one piece. I looked up at the sky, which was darkening rapidly, and saw the first faint stars winking. I felt very small against that huge blue canvas, and it seemed important to remember just how small I was in comparison.

"Hey, Curtis! Are you gonna stand there all night?" Kurt asked. He and Wade were sitting against a couple of trees. There was another nearby, waiting for me. I just shook my head and started toward them.

* * *

By night fall, Sgt. Miller had pretty well shown us everything there was to see of the grounds.

When we'd stepped into Red Flag, I could almost feel Ponyboy's presence, which was strange because the room was tidy. It wasn't as if my eyes came to rest on anything belonging to him in particular. The racks, as Pony called them, were neatly made, their linens stretched tightly like canvas over drums. Miller pointed out Ponyboy's rack, which was alone to the left of the barracks door. I pulled at the lid of the footlocker, but it wouldn't open.

Miller explained that most of the guys wore the keys around their necks with their dog tags. "We found their tags here on their beds, though." With that, Miller used a key to open a cabinet on the wall next to the door. Sure enough, on the pegs, four sets of tags and keys hung there. He fished out a set and handed them to me.

Taking those tags sent a nasty shiver through me. Usually, when someone handed you tags, it meant the person wearing them was dead. I didn't like the vibe of that, of taking Ponyboy's tags in my hand, clutching their cool metal instead of him. But I brushed it aside and opened up the footlocker.

After a few minutes, I looked up at Sgt. Miller's face. "Looks like everything is here," I said. "Doesn't look like he had anything with him."

Miller nodded again. "Yet another reason we feel the guys didn't leave voluntarily," he agreed.

I noticed that some of his formality had worn off now that we were alone. I was glad for that. He almost seemed concerned now, whereas before I'd wanted to choke him for being so unruffled.

There was nothing special about that room, really. Just six beds and a two stall bathroom with two shower compartments and two sinks. Miller pointed down a short hallway at the other end of the room, near another door, and said that had been Kent's quarters.

"Is he at the sheriff's office, too?" Soda asked.

"No. He's being held here, at headquarters. We have a couple of small cells available in case anyone gets too unruly. We don't have to use them very often," Miller said. He checked his watch. "Guys," he said, and I was glad he'd dropped the gentlemen bit, "I have to check my Flag. They'll be coming out of class in a few minutes. If you'd like, you can tag along, see some more of the grounds."

That was how it went. We tagged along with his barracks for the day, watching them march endlessly in the mowed area between the buildings, and Soda finally got to see the Roster. Miller fought a smile when he asked if he could try it, but then he shook his head and said the Colonel would throw him in with Kent if he let Soda go through. Insurance. Soda was really disappointed, but he had a blast just watching the other guys go through it. Miller's voice dropped low, and he stepped back a little from the starting area, gesturing us to follow.

"Kent put your brother through this in full gear one day," he said. And then he explained what full gear was and how Kent had set Ponyboy up for a punishment he didn't deserve. "Your brother went through this exercise, forward and backward, for over two hours. That's something you don't see every day. He's a tough kid."

Two hours? Fifty pounds? I couldn't imagine where Ponyboy got that from. That would be about like me lugging a bundle of shingles up and down the thing. And he did it for two hours straight? I was mad enough to spit hearing that, and I could literally feel my face getting red as I listened to Miller describe watching Ponyboy slog his way through over and over again.

Miller must not have seen the look on my face, because he said, "He was nearly at a standstill in the end, but just when I thought he was going to drop, he'd take another step. I finally had to go out there and get him to stop. I sent him to the infirmary for the rest of the day."

Soda looked impressed and furious both at once. He barely took his eyes off the guys as they ducked, crawled, ran, jumped, climbed and leapt their way through. I could tell he was trying to picture Ponyboy there. His jaw tightened up as Miller talked. I couldn't really imagine it, myself. Pony's no slouch, but he's just a kid. These other guys looked like grown men as they moved through. Or maybe it was just seeing the uniforms that made it seem that way. I couldn't reconcile my goofy little brother plowing through the way these other guys were, but I was mad as hell thinking about how exhausted he must have been. I wanted to hit something. There was no place to put all of my anger, though, and I wasn't used to that. I wasn't used to having to squash it down and keep quiet. Somehow I understood that it was necessary.

So instead of blowing up, we just watched two of the guys, who were faster than anything I ever saw, and when they got to the top of the platform at the end, they shouted out, "OORAH!"

"Oorah!" Soda cried back at them, grinning. It was taking all that he had just to stand on the sidelines when he wanted to be on that Roster so bad he itched with it. Miller chuckled.

"Victory cry," he explained. "Way to go. Yes." He nodded as the two guys started back down they way they'd come. "PRIVATE HARPER," he called suddenly, making Soda jump, "GET THE LEAD OUT!"

I watched a somewhat heavy kid haul himself over the short wall and start on the second, taller one.

"He couldn't even get to top deck the first week. Now he's on his second run," Sgt. Miller said when he caught Soda smirking. Soda's eyebrows went up.

As the guys made it back our way, Sgt. Miller told them to gear down for chow. That's when I noticed a row of large knapsacks filled to bursting against the chain link fence behind us. The two fastest guys grabbed theirs like they were nothing at all and headed our way. Just before they passed us, I stepped in front of them.

"Could I see one of those for a minute?"

One of them nodded and held out his knapsack. I tested the weight of it. Soda had the other guys. This time, it was my eyebrows that lifted.

"What's in there?" I asked.

He shrugged and rattled off a laundry list of items that included various pieces of clothing, carabiners, ropes, sand pucks, and surveillance gear.

"Sand pucks?" I asked.

He unzipped a compartment and pulled out what resembled a hockey puck shaped bean bag filled with a very light sort of sand. It was chalky and it left a red dust on my hand.

"They don't trust us with guns, so we fight with these. If a guy turns red, you know you hit him."

"Aw, man, that's cool!" Soda laughed. The kid grinned and nodded. "You use all of that stuff?"

"Sure," the kid in front of him nodded. "we head out into those fields," he pointed past the Roster to a huge yard with stacked hay bales and tires, "and we practice tacticals. Combat, search and rescues," he shrugged again.

I handed him back the knapsack. This is the sort of stuff Pony had been doing? Why hadn't he mentioned it? All I remembered him talking about in his letters was the Roster. Well, he did talk about classes, too. But was this what he meant by field communications? First aid? I wondered about this strange whole world my brother had been living in and how much of it he must have just kept to himself. And then I wondered why.

I wondered all through dinner…or, chow, as they called it. The food wasn't bad. A little bland. A little bulked up with cheap, hot ingredients. But it was a lot like something we'd have at home. I didn't worry so much then about Ponyboy not getting enough to eat. At least not before he disappeared, anyway.

Sgt. Miller's group, Black Flag, was the last dinner group. The others had been moving through while his guys were on the Roster. Miller explained that it was rest hour for Black Flag, which meant that the guys would hang around the barracks and prepare for the next day or else write letters home, play cards, or read a book. He said he had to meet with the rest of the drill sergeants and then check in with Colonel Messner about the search. I didn't see what there was to check in over, since it wasn't like Ponyboy and the others had been found. We'd have heard something if they were.

Earlier, when we were talking in Red Flag, Soda had asked if we could sleep there. Since it was empty, Sgt. Miller agreed, though he said the courtesy quarters were somewhat nicer. But we didn't care. Both of us needed to feel like Ponyboy was around somewhere, and we'd both felt that way in Red Flag.

We tried to play blackjack on Ponyboy's rack, but Soda couldn't sit still. He started pacing the floor, and everything he'd been holding back all day came out. It didn't surprise me. I'd known it was a matter of time before the energy he was tamping down pushed up and out of him.

"Darry, why won't they look the one place Pony must be?" I knew he didn't expect an answer, so I just let him go on. "They've checked all over the south, so why not the north? I bet that Colonel knows something he ain't telling. If I see that Kent, I'm gonna knock him into next year, too, I bet he—"

Soda kept going, and I pretended to listen. But I just couldn't get Pony out of my head. I wondered if he was hurt. I wondered if he was dead. Somehow, though, I thought I would feel something. I don't know why. I don't remember feeling anything before those cops came to the door to tell us about Mom and Dad. But it was different with Pony, with Soda. I felt more connected to them. Maybe because we were brothers, maybe that's why it was different. But I just thought I would know if it was that bad. That final. Still, feeling pretty sure that Pony was alive wasn't much of an improvement on my mood.

I didn't know how much longer I could stand it. I even thought about taking some of that gear, grabbing Soda, and heading north to search for ourselves. But it was pitch black outside, miles from anywhere. And unless there were flashlights in those knapsacks, we wouldn't get too far. But I considered it even as I was fighting to keep my eyes open. And I kept considering it long after Soda, who was stretched out on Pony's rack, trailed off and fell asleep.

* * *


	18. Chapter 18

**Std disclaimer: I don't own anything about The Outsiders (book or movie, characters, TV scripts, or anything else)**

**

* * *

**

The rain woke me up. Or maybe it was thunder. I sat up, blinking in the fuzzy, pre-dawn light. My whole body hurt, and I felt like I weighed a thousand pounds. Everything took a lot of effort…like just sitting up. I didn't know whether it was just the three previous days of wilderness kicking my ass, or if it was our meager handful of not-yet-ripe piñon nuts. Or both. I was sick of dirt and rain and walking and climbing. I was sick to death of the outdoors. If I ever got home, I wasn't going to leave the house for a month, and I sure as hell wasn't going to spend any time in the lot. Not that I would, anyway, without Johnny to stretch out beside. I was even tired of the sunrise, not that there would be one today.

The next peal of thunder woke Wade and Kurt with a start. They seemed surprised to find themselves damp. It _was _odd that the first drops of moisture hadn't woken any of us. But then, we were all exhausted. If their faces were any indication, I looked like crap, too. They looked…gaunt. There were shadows under their eyes despite a fairly long night's sleep. We looked, I figured, a bit like bad wax figures. Slightly off. Unreal. Glazed over. Kurt, who was fairly dark skinned, was pale, which made Wade almost translucent. I guessed I'd be somewhere in between.

None of us wanted to talk to each other this morning. We just went our own way, doing our business, and drinking from the river. I rubbed the cold water on my face and then wondered why I bothered when the rain started falling harder. It was freezing, but I barely felt it mixed in with my other complaints.

We should be happy, I thought. We should be jumping for joy. We were going to make it back to camp today, Thursday, July 13th…day four of our "adventure". If this was what the overnight would have been like, I thought abstractly, I'm glad it got cancelled. But, of course, that would have been different. Shorter, for one, and we would have had a good supply of water. And we would have had gear. Like rain gear. Knives. Ropes. Flashlights. Whistles.

I wished I had some rain gear as we fell into step together. About ten miles to go now. It felt like ten thousand. I knew we'd make camp in about three hours, maybe less. But I halfway didn't believe it, either. It didn't seem possible. It felt like this was never going to end.

"We're almost there," Kurt said. He sounded as weary as I felt. It was as though he was trying to give himself a pep talk.

The storm increased in intensity, the thunder cracking so loudly that we could feel the vibration of it under our feet. And then the hail started, forcing us to duck into a tight crouch, covering our heads as cold, golf ball sized stones battered our backs. I really, really wanted this to be over.

* * *

I sat up with a start, not sure at first what had woken me. It took a minute to remember where I was. Of course, I don't spend a lot of time away from home. I'd been out of town more often in the last two months than in the last two years. Stretching, I noticed Soda wasn't on Pony's rack. I got to my feet immediately.

"Soda?" I called out.

He poked his head out of the bathroom area. _The latrine,_ I thought absently. His face creased up. "Man, do you hear that storm?"

Yeah. Ponyboy was out in that, somewhere. Maybe. Probably. I couldn't really picture him inside anywhere, and I couldn't picture him hitchhiking, which was another theory of Messner's. He suggested that maybe the guys had already made it to the highway and had gotten picked up by a trucker or a passing car. I just couldn't really see that happening. But what if it had? What if Ponyboy was on his way to our house? He could be anywhere. I'd never really considered that before. I'd assumed he was around here someplace, just somewhere undiscovered. Not walking along the highway with his thumb out, getting into strange cars with strange people. Panic crawled up into my throat.

"Darry? You okay?" Soda asked, coming out of the latrine. "You look funny."

I shook my head. "What if he's outside in that?" I pointed to the ceiling.

"He'd have to be, wouldn't he?" Soda frowned.

"I don't know," I said, stomping toward the latrine. "He could be at a truck stop in Tallahassee for all we know."

"It's about time you got mad," Soda called after me. I whipped around as though he'd grabbed me.

"Soda, you can't be serious," I said, unable to keep the hard edge of exasperation out of my voice. This was no time to be turning on the brother I still had left, but just then I wanted to throttle him. "You think I'm not mad? You think I'm not worried as hell? You think I don't realize that if they haven't found them by now, the chances of them being found alive get lower and lower?"

Soda swallowed hard. I could tell _he_ hadn't even been thinking like that. A new depth of misery drew itself over his face, and he fell back against the wall.

"Soda," I said more softly now, "don't you think this is killing me, just like it's killing you? I think of all the things that could be happening to him out there, and I get so damn scared I almost can't breathe."

He looked guilty now, with that admission hanging between us. When he looked up at me, his eyes were wet. And then he looked back at his hands. He was picking at his nails again, at imaginary grease. I watched him swallow hard for a second time.

I eased up beside him and put my hand on his shoulder. "We're going to find him, Soda," I said quietly. "Even if we have to gear up ourselves and go out there."

"When?" he asked. When he lifted his eyes, they were dry again. But he was still just as miserable.

"Soon as this storm passes," I said. "If they haven't found him by then, we'll do it ourselves." Another crack of thunder drowned me out. "But we can't go out in that," I said. Soda cracked a weak grin. I grinned back and ruffled his hair. It felt good to have a plan.

* * *

"Jesus," Kurt panted as he popped his head up warily. But the hail had stopped, at least for now.

The rain hadn't. Our clothes clung to us and we squished with each step. The blisters I already had grew blisters. All of us were limping pretty heavily. My head felt light. Every step I thought, this is it. I'm going to go down, and when I do, there will be no getting back up. But the next step still came and found me on my feet.

I told myself this was a breeze compared to the Roster in full gear. That was true enough to keep me going, putting one foot in front of the other. Between the wind, the rain, and the thunder, it was too loud to talk, even though I suddenly wanted to more than anything. I wanted a distraction from myself…from my knee, which felt like a knife was plunging into it with every step…and from my hunger, which was back to being just an angry hollow feeling…to the leaden weight of my legs as they carried me along. All of it.

We said nothing because we would have had to shout, and none of us had the energy to shout. Misery spilled off of us in waves. We were like sad, wet dogs left chained in the yard, whining longingly at the warm, dry house.

* * *

It was too early for chow, I thought, but Sgt. Miller came knocking on the barracks door to check in on me and Soda. His face was grim as thunder cracked loud enough to rattle the windows. He didn't like the thought of the guys out there any more than we did.

"Drills, tacticals, and the Roster are shut down for the time being," he said. "Most of the barracks are pulling indoor details. Why don't you come get some chow, and then we'll check in with Colonel Messner?"

Soda and I nodded. It wasn't all that far to the chow hall, but with the rain, Sgt. Miller didn't want us to get soaked, so he'd come out in a different utility cart, this one with a roof. We still got wet because the sides were open, but it was a quick enough ride that it wasn't too bad. He came in with us, and I noticed that Black Flag was already there, passing through line.

Breakfast was pretty much what we would be doing at home…eggs and bacon, milk and juice. It was hot and it was good. You can't really mess those up too much. Even Soda does okay with those, and they come out the right colors, too. I didn't want to give Miller a hard time, but I couldn't help letting my frustration show.

"Have they given any more thought to checking up north?" I asked.

Miller frowned. "No," he said, taking another forkful of eggs. "Messner's convinced that the only real freedom is to the south. It's the most direct route to the highway, and every time we've had someone try an escape, which is pretty much at least once every summer, the guys always head that way. He figures the pattern will hold."

"Which is stupid, because any kid that was really serious about getting out of here wouldn't let a few extra feet or even a few extra miles stop him," I retorted.

"If y'all don't find him soon, we'll find him ourselves," Soda groused. I shot him a loaded look. _Shut up._ He didn't say anything else.

"Look, guys, I agree with you, but I don't get to make the decisions around here. I told your brother I've been trying to get this place shut down for three years now. It's the only reason I keep volunteering to come back. Kent's the worst of them, but he's not the only one that's crossing lines here. But even with everything I've seen him pull, I wouldn't have expected him to just take these kids out of camp. I don't know what he was trying to achieve or if he's just finally lost his grip completely."

I never expected Sgt. Miller to be so up front about the situation. The fact that he was bumped up my fear another notch. The continuing thunder made it creep up farther still. I couldn't find a way to solve that mystery, and neither could Soda.

"Okay, guys, I have to attend a search team briefing," Miller said as he rose and picked up his tray. "We're bringing the other parents in for a meeting in the conference room at 1000 hours. Until then, I've got my guys in the classroom working on some indoor exercises. You can hang around with them or go back to the barracks."

I nodded. "Thanks."

"They're in E-4," he said, "East building, room four," he added over his shoulder, "if you want to hang out in there."

There really wasn't anything else to do, we figured, so we poked our heads in the classroom. The guys were practicing field first aid. Soda and I exchanged a look. That would come in handy after a rumble. I thought of how banged up Two-Bit had been after those guys got a hold of him on Greeley. It would've come in handy then, too.

We learned how to immobilize a guy, splint him up, stop heavy bleeding, you name it. I couldn't help checking the clock on the wall a lot, though. Time seemed to be standing still. It was only seven-thirty in the morning. The sky was still darker than normal for the time of day, though the thunder had eased up to a soft rumble for now. But I could still hear rain spilling from the roof. It sounded like someone pissing in gravel.

We got a lot of looks from the guys, just like we'd gotten a lot of looks the day before. They were curious. Some were embarrassed and awkward. Some were full of pity. I wanted to shake those guys until they knocked it off. I wanted to shout at them that everything would be fine, so quit looking like that. But I didn't know if it would ever be fine again, so I couldn't. I could almost feel their thousand questions. But they didn't ask. I figured Miller had been pretty stern with them about laying off of me and Soda. Play nice but don't bug those guys. That sort of thing.

At five to eight, a guy named Clark, who was Miller's Lance Corporal, told us it was time to pack up the first aid kits and put them away. We were going to move to E-7 for field com class. Soda, who can't stand doing the same thing for very long, perked up at the sound of that. He had our supplies packed up and put away before any of the others.

I almost grinned at that. I gave one last look at the clock and followed the others down the hall.


	19. Chapter 19

WHOOPS! Fixed continuity errors.

**Std disclaimer: I don't own anything about The Outsiders (book or movie, characters, TV scripts, or anything else)**

* * *

I couldn't be sure what time it was. When the sun was out, I could sort of get a rough idea of the time by how it sat in the sky. I couldn't tell you the hour or anything, but I knew roughly when dawn gave way to early morning and early yielded to late morning and so on. And seeing as how I'd figured it would take about three hours, maybe three and a half hours, to make it back to camp, I wished I knew what time we'd started and what time it was now.

The north side of the lake was drawing near, though, which meant it wasn't much farther. Once we hit the south side of lake, it was about a quarter mile to the gates behind Red Flag, and then another hundred yards or so to Red Flag itself. It was kind of stupid, actually. They had front gates and they had guards there, but the back gates were always unlocked and unmanned. Didn't they realize if a guy wanted out bad enough, he could just stroll out that way? Of course, it was a long, long walk around the grounds to get back to the front gates…and then you still had to get past them. And there were other gates past the Roster, but they were always closed and locked. There were no guards, but since one Flag or another was always out on the Roster or on fire watch, I guess they figured a guy couldn't sneak out. Maybe it was the same with the lake gate.

By the time we rounded the north side of the lake, the worst of the lightning and the thunder had eased, which was a good thing. Several times, it had us nearly jumping out of our skin. I had a feeling I wasn't going to like thunderstorms as much anymore, after this experience. What really got us was when a bolt of lightning snapped down into the trees just west of the north edge of the lake. We all started running like our pants were on fire, but our run was short-lived because Kurt went down mid-stride. He just dropped, like muscle failure. No warning. No slowing, even.

I skidded to a stop beside him, holding my breath and waiting for him to move. He did, groaning, and relief dripped over me like the buckets of rain that continued to pour down over us. "Jesus, man, are you okay?"

He rolled over on his back, wincing. "Are you okay?" he snapped. His eyes were wet, and it wasn't just the rain. I shook my head.

"You know I ain't," I said. "And you know Wade ain't, either," I said as Wade eased wearily down beside us. "But we're so close, Kurt."

Wade nodded. "Just imagine the looks on their faces when we come strolling into the quad."

Kurt liked the sound of that. Hell, _I_ liked the sound of that. We would show them, that's for sure. You could batter us, you could wear us down. You could damn near kill us. But you couldn't stop us.

We hauled him up, and he wobbled a bit, but he stayed on his feet. And so it started again, one foot in front of the other. If I had to guess, I'd say it was about three miles to the south side of the lake. Somehow, though, I knew they would be the longest three miles of my life, and that the last quarter mile to the gate would be longer still.

* * *

Field com was pretty fascinating. The instructor, a guy named Jacob Watson, was teaching the guys about different codes and the history of code-breaking. He gave us a sheet of what he called substitution ciphers, where you took the alphabet and then substituted one letter with another. But it wasn't as simple as running A-Z against Z-A. You might have "T" stand for "C" in one cipher and then the next time "T" might be "H". Of course, he explained these were simple to crack because all you needed to do was find the key, which was essentially the number of letters in the "shift". There were only 25 possible shifts, so if you really wanted to spend the time, you could crack the cipher without breaking a sweat.

Soda got a real kick out of it, though. About the only movie he could sit through was a spy movie, so this was right up his alley. He drove me nuts, pestering me to write him something in code. But it was only about eight-forty and class wouldn't let out until five to nine, so I gave in and started working on one. What else was I going to do with those fifteen minutes?

It was harder than I thought to remember which letters went with which letters, and I barely finished before LC Clark rounded us up and told us to move to E-5. It wasn't a class, though. They'd given up trying to find enough indoor activities and were letting the guys have an extra rest period.

Someone started up a round of gin rummy, and I found myself with a hand full of crap. I couldn't really focus on the game because I was too busy listening for the rain to ease up so that Soda and I could start looking for Ponyboy. But then I figured we should probably wait to see what the ten o' clock meeting held. And when it held the same bullshit as the last one, we would strike out on our own.

I didn't know how much more of this waiting I could take. This going through the motions, hanging around with Black Flag and watching them pass from activity to activity. I knew I was getting a very different experience than whatever Pony had had, and it wasn't just because we were visitors and not enrollees. It was because Miller wasn't Kent. A whim of fate, a random line up right off the bus, had turned this into a nightmare for Ponyboy. It wasn't that Miller wasn't stern or disciplined with his Flag. He barked at them the way you'd expect a drill sergeant to do. But he kept his hands off the guys, which we'd come to find out is only one difference between the Red Flag experience and the Black Flag experience.

Huh. Red Flag. No pun intended, right? I almost grinned at my own joke. But it was no joke. Miller had told us that Pony's shoulder had been dislocated by Kent and that he'd also been told about an incident where Pony had been pinned to the ground with Kent's foot on his neck so that he couldn't breathe and almost passed out. Those were red flags, alright. And they always seemed to happen when no one important was around to see.

I wanted to get ahold of Kent. It wasn't the first time I'd wished for it, but the intensity of my desire to slam him face down into the ground and grind him there until he stopped was enough to scare me. Righteous anger was one thing. Killing a man was a whole other thing. And I could kill Kent. I could.

I watched the hands of the clock creep slowly. 9:05. 9:08. 9:13. Getting to ten was probably going to kill me.

* * *

The wind started picking up again as we rounded the south shore of the lake. Wade flopped down, shaking his head apologetically.

"Just for a minute guys," he promised, his breathing ragged.

I just stood there, shifting my weight from aching foot to aching foot. If I sat down just now, I wasn't going to be able to get back up. I was relying completely on momentum. I couldn't stop moving, even, or I'd freeze up like a statue. Kurt and Wade would have to send someone out to pick me up and carry me back.

Kurt stood, too, though he was still. If we looked like crap before, we looked worse now. What was worse than crap, I wondered offhandedly. When you were at the bottom, and there was no place lower to go, what then?

I thought about that gate, about passing through it. I figured one Flag or another would be drilling in the quad. Unless maybe they were pulling details because of the rain. But Kent would have had us drilling, so I didn't know for sure. If anyone was drilling, they'd be the first to see us. Or anyone out on top deck. They had the bird's eye view. They'd see us when we hit the gate, if they were looking that direction.

"Hey," I said then, and Wade looked up at me from the ground. Kurt watched me, too. "I say we don't just stumble in through that gate. We march."

They just looked at me. I didn't know what they were thinking. Maybe the liked the idea. Or maybe they thought Curtis had finally gone around the bend.

"Kent wanted us to die out here," I admitted. Even though Kent was a bastard, it was hard to admit that was what he had hoped for. He'd gotten one out of four wishes, too. The fact that a human being could do the things he'd done to us, and do them for his own pure amusement…it was something I couldn't understand. I hoped I never _would _understand.

Kurt nodded, and Wade grinned.

"We march in," Wade agreed.

"March," Kurt echoed with a nod.

"We go in there with our heads high," I told them. "Show them we're still standing, still breathing. Still unbroken," I added.

We all felt it then, in spite of the wind and the rain. In spite of the thunder that was starting to complain loudly again. A last bit of energy. One last surge of pride to get us through.

Wade put his hand out, gesturing that I should lead the march. "Lance Corporal," he said, still with his hand out. Kurt nodded and fell in behind me. Wade took the rear.

"Company," I said, my voice stronger than it had been in days, "forward march!"

* * *

Thunder. Again. I put my cards down and ducked out of the game. They had to keep prompting me to take my turn, anyway. The classroom door was open, and I watched the rain fall in sheets. Jesus, I thought. Pass, already. But the clouds stubbornly clung to the sky. It felt like they squatted over the camp with purpose, with evil intent.

I was just about to get up and move to the door when an ear-splitting siren began to wail. I looked at the guys, and they looked at one another, surprised. Then they dropped their cards and rushed for the door.

LC Clark looked over his shoulder at us. "C'mon, guys."

"What is that?" I shouted over the blaring wail.

"Well, usually, it means combat drill!" He shouted back. "We're supposed to fall in in the quad and wait for instructions!"

What was going on? Were they finally going to listen to us and start looking up north?

Soda and I pushed our way past the others. This had to have something to do with Pony and the others. It had to.

We made it to the quad with just a handful of others, and those guys were pointing back toward Red Flag. There, just coming around the edge of the barracks, was Ponyboy. There were two other guys behind him. They were soaked to the bone and staring straight ahead, unblinking as they marched toward us.

Soda started for them, but I caught him, throwing my arm across his chest. Because I saw it, then. Pony was…different. He saw me, saw us. He looked straight at me and Soda, where we stood at the front of the crowd that was forming. The three of them marched in total silence. Even the sirens stopped. They marched until they stood just a few yards short of Soda and I. And then my little brother, who could barely say "boo!" to anybody, snapped to a straight and tall standstill, hollering, "Company, halt!"

That was when the camp exploded into applause. The applause and the "OORAHs" drowned out the rumble and rush of the storm.

That was when it hit me. There were three. Only three. I closed my eyes against it and wondered which parents would go home with broken hearts.

They just stood there in the rain, their clothes tattered, stained and torn and their bodies battered and bruised. But their backs were straight, and their heads were up. A little shiver swept through me at the sight of Ponyboy so changed. It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if he'd toughened up a bit, stopped dreaming so much, but the thought of losing the brother I knew completely made me a little cold inside. Something twisted in my heart, because I was just realizing what it must have taken to get here, to this point.

Those boys stayed at attention, their mouths in tight, silent lines, until Colonel Messner, clad in a poncho, made it out in his utility cart with Sgt. Miller beside him. Messner climbed out, and he went to stand before the three. Having watched him drive up, they were standing at attention and saluting now.

"At ease," he told them, and they took that stance that Miller had made so familiar: feet apart, hands clasped behind their backs. But they still head their heads up, and they still showed nothing of what they had to be feeling. "Lance Corporal, can you tell me where you and your men have been?"

Part of me wanted to rush forward and tackle the idiot. There were more important things to be done right now, for Christ's sake! Get them warm, for one. Get them fed, get them checked out at the infirmary! But the rush of relief I had felt had given way to a sort of awe. Pride. It would be finished soon enough. Maybe it needed to be this way.

"Sir," Ponyboy called loudly, though the Colonel was just a few feet away. "not exactly, sir!"

"Where 'not exactly' have you been, then?"

"If I had to guess, sir, I'd say Colorado, sir!"

A smug sort of satisfaction curled in me at the sound of that. We'd told them, hadn't we?

"And where is Private Puzo?"

Now, finally, three heads tipped down. But Ponyboy lifted his again, and his voice wasn't as strong now. "Sir, Private Puzo fell and injured himself. He passed on, sir."

I closed my eyes again. I'd figured as much, but it hurt to hear it.

The Colonel seemed to want to say something else, ask something else. But instead, he just barked, "Lance Corporal, get your men out of this rain, get cleaned up, get some chow. Meet me at HQ at—" he looked down at his wristwatch, "1200 hours. Stop by the infirmary, also." And then he saluted them, and they saluted him in return.

"Fall out!" Ponyboy shouted.

This time, I let Soda run to him. And I ran with him.


	20. Chapter 20

**Std disclaimer: I don't own anything about The Outsiders (book or movie, characters, TV scripts, or anything else)**

* * *

Soda and I clung to Ponyboy for a good, long while. I couldn't find words. Soda rubbed his head and, in light-hearted Soda fashion, chuckled and told him that it _did _feel tuff. When I felt Pony start to shake a little, and heard him suck in a breath, a profound relief nearly knocked me off of my feet. Some part of the Ponyboy I knew was still in there somewhere. He'd just learned to hide.

Hell, we probably embarrassed the hell out of him, three guys stuck together like glue for a small eternity. But then I felt Ponyboy give out a little, and I steadied him and eased him back.

"We need to get out of this rain," I said. It came out gruffly. I didn't mean it to. It was just that I had this huge lump in my throat that I couldn't swallow down.

He nodded and turned toward Red Flag. Funny, I hadn't noticed before, but he was limping heavily. I wondered where he was hurt, what damage we would find on him this time. "M-man," he said, his teeth chattering now, "I want a shower so bad, it ain't funny!"

Soda poked his arm with one elbow. "Ain't you had enough showers today?"

Pony gave him a wan smile. "Enough _rain_ showers," he agreed.

He had dark shadows under his eyes. His fatigues were looser than I remembered them being when we put him on the bus. Of course, they would be, wouldn't they? He probably hadn't eaten anything out there. I didn't think a guy like Kent would have the mercy to leave them with rations.

Inside the barracks, Soda and I changed back into the clothes we'd been wearing the day before. I was glad I had decided to bring an extra pair of jeans. We hadn't known how long we would be.

Ponyboy peeled out of his shirt and got out of his boots and socks. Fury bubbled up inside me as I saw the bruises along his back. He reached for his neck and blinked.

"Shit," he said. "I lost my tags."

I shook my head. "Miller found them on your bed," I said, and went to the cabinet, where Miller had left them. I tossed them to him. He looked bewildered.

"I didn't notice they were gone," he said and frowned. Then he got into his footlocker and pulled out the alternate set of camo pants and the extra RCJMC shirt. He slung a standard issue white towel over his shoulder, and then he just brushed past us with his bath kit and went into the latrine without another word.

I wondered what he was thinking, how he was feeling. If he was in a lot of pain, or just a little. He was quiet, but then, he'd always been quiet. I didn't know if it meant anything or not. Soda was looking at the empty archway after him. He seemed torn. I knew he, too, was wondering if Ponyboy was alright. Of course, he _wasn't _alright. I guess Soda was wondering to what degree he wasn't alright.

Not knowing what to do with ourselves, we sat down on two of the other racks and waited while he showered.

* * *

God. I'd never been so glad to see any two people in my entire life. Why did it all seem so unreal? I half wondered if I wasn't still under a tree somewhere, dreaming the whole thing. I really hoped not. I wanted it to be real. I wanted it so bad that I almost couldn't get myself to duck into the latrine. I was afraid if I left them there, I'd find out they were never really there to begin with.

It seemed like some other guy stepping into the shower stall and pulling the curtain shut, twisting on the tap until the water was hot enough to scald him. It was someone else who squirted enough shampoo in his hand to wash Rapunzel's hair instead of his own short spikes. It was someone else who damn near fell asleep in the shower under the delicious, lazy heat that poured over him. It was such a welcome rain.

I wondered how it was I never noticed those tags were gone. The key. Kent hadn't even wanted us to have something _like _something sharp. Something useful, even if only moderately so.

I toweled off and got dressed and tried to decide which one I wanted more…food or sleep. But when I stepped out of the latrine and began to feel all three days (and today) in every bone of my body, I wondered if I might rather visit the infirmary. But the thought of Ratched's customary two aspirins wasn't enough of an incentive. I wondered if she'd give me another 2DLD. That made me smirk.

Seeing Darry on Wade's rack and Soda on Charlie's stopped me in my tracks. I hadn't forgotten they were here, but they didn't fit. It made me disoriented, left me unstructured. I didn't know what to do next, what would come next. It spooked me a little, realizing my time was about to become my own again. What would I do with it all?

"Pony?" Darry asked, watching me levelly.

"Yeah?" I asked over my shoulder, heading back to my footlocker. I stowed my bath kit and locked it up again. It was a relief to feel those tags again, though I couldn't say why. I hadn't even known they were gone.

"What do you say we get some chow?" Darry sounded funny, but I was too tired to think about it, to figure out what he wanted from me. He'd just have to spell it out.

I still didn't know whether I wanted to sleep or eat. But Darry seemed to want me to eat, so I pulled my knapsack, still packed from my marathon on the Roster, off the peg on the wall and fished out the little pouch that held my poncho. I pointed to the wall behind them and said, "Y'all can use some of the others' stuff."

It was still pouring. I was glad for that poncho. And I was glad, too, that I'd chosen to eat instead of sleep as I smelled the heavy odor of meat. Didn't matter what kind. Mystery was fine, so long as it was hot and had gravy.

I was surprised to find Wade and Kurt there, in dry clothes, chasing the last of their gravy around with pieces of plain white bread. My mouth watered so bad I almost drooled all over my own overloaded tray. "Hey," I said, wondering where they'd been. How they got dressed without coming back to the barracks. Wade was in his 2nd pair of camos and drabs, too, but Kurt was wearing plain old jeans and a grey sweatshirt.

"Hey," Wade nodded.

Kurt swallowed. "Feel better?"

"Hell, no," I said. They grinned wearily. I was surprised they weren't face down in their chow.

I realized then that Darry and Soda were standing by the table, watching us. "Shit, I'm sorry," I said, standing up. "Guys, these are my brothers, Darry," I pointed, "and Sodapop."

Kurt just shook his head. "Kent would've had a field day with that," he said.

I nodded. "And this is Wade," I put a hand out toward him, "and he's Kurt."

Darry and Soda nodded and grinned. They sat down. It was so strange, the five of us sitting down together, eating. They were home, and home was here. Something felt wrong with that. I wasn't sorry they were here, not by a long shot. I just didn't know how to tie the two together. Or why I should think that I had to. Or why it felt like something to be ashamed of. Ashamed for Darry and Soda to see.

"Where'd you guys get those clothes?" I finally asked, just to break the loaded silence. "I didn't hear you come back to Red Flag."

"We didn't." Kurt said, swallowing the last of his milk. "Thought you might like a little time with your brothers, so we borrowed some clothes from a couple guys in Black Flag."

"You need to see Nurse Tustin," Wade said. "She's expecting you." So that was her name. Tustin.

Darry slid a glance my way. He and Soda were just taking it all in, not saying much. That felt odd, too. I had so much to say, but the words wouldn't come. I wondered if they felt the same.

"What for? To give me two aspirin and a 2DLD?" I snorted.

"Nah," Kurt shook his head. "She's gonna stick you with a needle full of antibiotics, just in case. Says we could get sick from drinking all that fresh mountain water."

I hadn't thought of that. Shoot. Guess I'd better get over there. The last thing I wanted was to feel any worse. "Soon as I'm done eating."

Funny thing was, I almost _couldn't_ eat. I picked at the meatloaf and mashed potatoes. It was delicious, but after the first couple of greedy forkfuls, I felt…full. I wondered if all that growling my stomach had done was actually my insides folding up into themselves, shriveling away. But I didn't want to worry Darry and Soda, and I wasn't missing their eyes darting to my plate, keeping count.

"So, where are y'all from?" Wade asked, aiming his question at Darry and Soda, trying to include them.

"Tulsa," Darry said, fiddling with the rim of his glass. "How about you?"

"Little Rock," Wade told them.

Kurt swallowed again. "Albuquerque."

"Hey," I broke in, "are your folks here?"

Wade shrugged. "Not yet." Soda looked at him with pity. He either pretended not to notice or he ignored it.

"Yeah," Kurt nodded. "Miller took me over to HQ practically before I got out of the shower." He grinned, but then his face darkened. "I can't believe they won't let us go home."

Darry's head whipped up, and Soda's jaw dropped. "What?" Darry asked. "What do you mean they won't let you go home?"

"Yet," Wade said, wiping gravy off his chin with the back of his hand. "They have to contact the courts."

Kurt nodded. "Our judges have to agree to release us early since the judgments were nine weeks. It's only been about four. Not even quite that, yet."

"You mean they might make y'all finish the session?" Soda was stunned.

I was pretty shocked, too. I'd always just assumed if we made it back, I'd be headed home with Darry and Soda by night fall the same day. Today. It felt like more of Kent's cruelty, like he was still clawing at me even though I hadn't seen hide nor hair of him around anywhere.

Darry shook his head. "That judge can just go to hell," he said. "Soon as you've eaten and gotten that shot and had some rest, we're on the highway."

I was grateful to hear him say that, even if it couldn't be true. I'd do whatever the judge said I had to do to keep from getting put in a boy's home, even if it meant wandering around the countryside for another three days. Even if it meant watching Darry and Soda drive out those gates without me.


	21. Chapter 21

**Std disclaimer: I don't own anything about The Outsiders (book or movie, characters, TV scripts, or anything else)**

**

* * *

**

I gave up on chow after that little bombshell from Kurt. Darry's brow knitted when I got up with my tray. Wade and Kurt nodded to Darry and Soda, and they exchanged those "Good meeting you" platitudes. Wade said we'd all see each other again at the meeting in the Colonel's conference room at 1200 hours.

Darry and Soda stayed at the table, still eating, and Kurt and Wade and I walked our trays to the dish line.

"Look, I'm sorry if I made your brothers mad," Kurt said. "I didn't know Miller hadn't told them yet."

I shrugged. "It's okay. Better we know now, I guess, than having that dropped on us at HQ. At least now it's got time to sink in so Darry doesn't jump over the table and try to strangle the Colonel." I tried to laugh it off, but I felt like someone had stuck a hot poker in my stomach. The very idea that we might be made to see it through to the end...I sure as hell felt like we deserved something for what we'd been through.

On my way to the infirmary, I dropped one hand on Darry's shoulder and the other on Soda's. "Guess I have to go get stuck," I said. "Will you be in Red Flag after chow?"

Darry nodded. Soda grinned at me and said, "Be good for nursey, Ponyboy. Maybe she'll give you a sucker."

I smirked. "You obviously haven't met her," I said, and headed for the double doors.

With food in me, my eyelids grew even heavier. I felt drunk. I remembered the way it felt from the time I was thirteen, just after Mom and Dad died, and I discovered liquor one boring, angry afternoon. I couldn't seem to walk a straight line, and my thoughts were slow, like slogging through mud run.

I sank into Nurse Tustin's waiting room chair gratefully. She wasn't behind the little glass window at her desk, so I put my head back against the wall to wait. Next thing I knew I felt someone shaking me hard.

"Lance Corporal Curtis!"

I blinked. My head felt like it weighed a thousand pounds, but I couldn't mistake the sound of Ratched's familiar bark.

"Follow me," She said as soon as she saw my eyes.

I staggered into the exam room after her. As usual, she was swift in her assessment of me. Maybe I imagined it, but she didn't seem as harsh.

"You're limping pretty good, Curtis," she observed. "Is it your ankle or your knee?"

"Knee," I yawned.

"Drop 'em so I can take a look," she said, pointing to my camo pants.

"There's nothing to see," I said, but I did as she ordered. "I just twisted it up coming down off a ridge." Or falling off it, I thought. She didn't need to know that.

She decided to poke at it with her hands, anyway. I clamped my jaw to keep from wincing. And I was wrong about there being nothing to see. It was a little swollen and there was bruising along both sides of my knee cap. "Looks like a pretty good sprain," she said. "Let me wrap it for you. I want you to ice it and put it up at least three times a day."

This was the most I'd heard out of her, so I knew for sure that her view of me had changed. Maybe she saw us all as hoods and nothing else. Maybe she couldn't tolerate anyone she thought was a bad seed. Who knows. I didn't know why she would change her mind. I could still be a hood, after all. Being dropped in Colorado and having to find my way back wouldn't have changed any criminal tendencies, I didn't figure. But she saw me with new eyes.

She jabbed the antibiotic into me like she still didn't like me, though. She told me if I started to run a fever or vomit to come back for more or to go see my family doctor. She knew, then, that my future was in limbo. Seems like everybody knew everybody else's business around here.

I grinned when she gave me those two aspirin. She glanced at the clock. It was eleven forty-five. Just how long had I been left sleeping in her waiting room? I wondered.

"I'd have you ice that knee, but you're due in the Colonel's office at 1200 hours, right?"

I nodded.

"Come back afterward, unless you get released," she ordered. Then she scribbled on that pad of hers. "In case you have to stick around," she said. And then she actually smiled at me. I thought that by the looks of it, she didn't do it often and didn't really know how. But I smiled back. "You're dismissed, Curtis."

Outside the infirmary door, I glanced at the slip. _1WKLD._ I chuckled to myself and reached up under the poncho to tuck it into my pocket.

* * *

The second Ponyboy was out of earshot, I threw my fork down. "If they don't let him out of here, I swear to God I'm going back to Tulsa and hunting that judge down."

Soda nodded. "Sounds like a good idea to me." After another second, his voice dropped down sadly. "He's not himself," Soda said, and I felt that little stab in my chest again.

"He's been through a lot, Soda. He's exhausted and half starved. And hurting pretty bad, too, judging by that limp." I shrugged. Somehow, I'd hoped Soda wouldn't notice, which was insane, because he knew Pony better than anyone. He'd have to notice. "We just need to give him a little time." I wasn't sure I believed my own words. I wasn't sure that this hadn't permanently changed him, and I wasn't sure if those changes were good changes or bad changes.

Soda nodded. "Yeah, I guess so." But he glanced at the doors, too, just like I had, and I know he was worrying just like I was.

It seemed to me that the quickest way to get Ponyboy back to his old self, or back to it as much as possible, was to get him out of here. Get him home. I waited for twelve noon with the same impatience I'd felt waiting for word on Pony.

We hung around Red Flag, waiting for Pony to come back from the infirmary. When an hour passed, I threw down the L'Amour book I'd grabbed out of his footlocker and said, "I'm going down there to see what's taking him so long. You want to come along?"

Soda, who'd dozed off after lying awake half the night on Pony's rack (a fact he didn't tell me until Pony was safely in the shower), blinked up at me sleepily. "Huh?"

"Pony's been in the infirmary for an hour. I'm going to see what's taking so long. Do you want to come with me?"

He nodded and rolled to his feet, yawning hugely. "Time to get up, anyway, if I don't want to be caught snoring in that meeting."

It had finally stopped raining, though the clouds clung stubbornly to the sky like a cat on a screen door. I figured it could start up again any minute, but I left the poncho on its peg, still beaded with rain.

One Flag or another was out in the quad now, marching. The shouts of their drill sergeant, a guy I didn't recognize, carried on the stilted air. I'd have wagered that another Flag was on the Roster. And a lot of classroom doors were open and I could see the guys inside, learning something or another. Back to normal, I supposed.

When I pulled open the door, I saw exactly what was taking so long. Ponyboy was sound asleep in a chair in the waiting area, his head back against the wall. The desk and chair behind the glass reception window were unoccupied, and I noticed a little tent card propped on the sill that said, _I'll be back soon. Please wait._ I wondered how long he'd been waiting before falling asleep.

Soda grinned at me, and we both just watched him breathe for a minute. He still looked thirteen when he slept. I'd spent a lot of time in the doorway, watching him after those nightmares that started after Mom and Dad died. Then, of course, I'd moved Soda in with him and he didn't seem to need me anymore, so I stopped watching.

I nudged Soda with my elbow. "Let's go," I whispered. "He'll be okay here until the nurse gets back."

Soda nodded.

We ran into Sgt. Miller on our way out of the infirmary. He was just marching his guys past the admin buildings toward the tactical field. He nodded at us, but he didn't stop. He had work to do.

When we rounded the corner of the building, I saw Mr. and Mrs. Puzo coming out of the double doors of the HQ lobby. She was sobbing uncontrollably, half-supported by Mr. Puzo, and half-supported by a man in a dress blues uniform. I grabbed Soda's arm to stop him.

"Oh, man," he breathed, when he realized what I was seeing. "Oh, man…"

I put my hand on the back of his head. I knew without looking that his eyes, like mine, had gone wet. And I knew without asking that we were both thinking how easily that could have been the two of us, save the men on either side to hold us up. But then again, if it had been me or Soda, we might've needed that sort of help ourselves.


	22. Chapter 22

**Std disclaimer: I don't own anything about The Outsiders (book or movie, characters, TV scripts, or anything else)**

**

* * *

**

Darry and Soda were just walking up to the HQ building when I rounded the corner from the infirmary, trying to shake off the heavy effects of that nap. They both just sort of looked at me. There was something in their faces. When I caught up with them, Darry put a hand on my shoulder and said quietly,

"We saw Mr. and Mrs. Puzo come out of here earlier. They'd just been given the news."

And then I knew what it was on their faces. Gratitude. Relief. Shame for feeling both while watching somebody else's hearts break.

We filed into the conference room silently. I nodded at Wade and Kurt. Kurt sat between his parents. Wade sat on the other side of Mrs. Slozack, alone. I felt bad for him that he was still waiting on his folks. I wondered if maybe his folks were like Johnny's, except rich. If their son was an afterthought. An inconvenience. Not that they hit him the way Johnny's parents did, but there was a lot people could do to hurt you without knocking you around. Just forgetting you was enough, most times.

The Colonel waited while the introductions were made. Kurt's mother interpreted for Kurt's father, who was deaf. The Colonel made sure he gave her enough time before he got started. There were several men in dress blues, standing in the corners of the room and along the sides since all the chairs were taken. Sgt. Miller was also there, though he was wearing his drabs since he'd come from working with his Flag.

It was a debriefing, he explained. We were here for many reasons. One, to get as much information into what Kurt, Wade, and I knew about the night we disappeared. Two, to discuss the red tape that still bound us here, at camp, for now. Three, to discuss the search for Paul Puzo's remains so that he could be given a proper burial.

I felt like I'd been kicked in the stomach by a horse at that part. I must have made a noise, or something, because both Darry and Soda, who were on either side of me, put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. That just made me feel worse, being here with them and knowing that Paul's parents would never be able to do the same thing again. You sent your kid away to straighten him out, and he came back destroyed…it wasn't right. That wasn't how it was supposed to go.

The Colonel started with me, explaining that he was going to question us in order of rank. That's when Wade stood up.

"Sir, I apologize for interrupting, sir, but if you want to go by rank, you'll have to start with me."

Every head in the place turned. He'd just been introduced as Private Wade Milsap. Even Mrs. Slozack knew that Private was the bottom rung.

When the Colonel just waited, Wade saluted him and said, "Sir, First Sergeant Aaron Wade Kitchner, 2nd MP Battalion. I've been placed here as Private Wade Steven Milsap to investigate allegations of improper conduct by Sgt. David McAvoy Kent."

Wade? Skinny Wade? Kurt and I exchanged drop-jawed looks. But then I thought of the way he'd just set his mouth in a tight line and took whatever Kent dished out instead of crying like a baby. I thought of him suggesting that I hide Cicarello's knife behind the ceiling tiles. I thought of him stabbing the fallen tree with the knife, telling us about making an emergency drinking cup out of bark. Of using our boots to gather water. Of suggesting we jump the gap up on the Pipe instead of heading all the way back down.

And then I thought of how he was always tripping over his own feet, how he couldn't get through the Roster without falling flat on his face at least once. How he just seemed wrong for his own skin, unable to coordinate his own arms and legs. And he was a First Sergeant? He outranked Kent?

We listened to Wade introduce one of the men in dress blues as Captain James Roy Tanner, his commanding officer. The Captain took over explaining how Wade (or Aaron, I guess it was) got placed on assignment in camp, how he'd submitted a deposition and that deposition had become a court-martial convening order.

My head was still spinning over Wade's surprise when I was asked to describe the events of July 9th and 10th. I started with Kent taking me out behind Red Flag to tell me about the hearing and his warning to keep my mouth shut, and then I walked through everything else after that as best I could remember. The entire room was stone silent, hanging on my every word. I noticed for the first time a woman in a pale blue blouse and navy blue skirt, typing into the same sort of machine the court reporters used, putting my words into permanent record.

Kurt's version was pretty much the same. He also suspected that it was Kent who actually dumped him out, though he thought Greg and Charlie were the ones to bind him up, same as I thought. He'd been kicked, too, though it was lower down on his back.

After having revealed himself as Marine MP, Wade had allowed Kurt and I to describe the events as we saw them. But now he spoke out about everything he'd observed and everything he'd personally experienced at Kent's hands. It took a while. He never missed a trick. Even some of the stuff that seemed minor by comparison came out, like the way Kent handed me and him the worst details more often than the others, how Greg and Charlie almost never pulled fire watch, and how Kent seemed to encourage gang-type behavior.

He described watching me for those hours on the Roster in full gear, and I felt Darry and Soda tense up at the way he described me as _pushed well beyond the limits of human capacity_. He went on to say that spending the rest of the day in the infirmary had not, in his estimation, seen me fully recovered from the event.

That meeting went on for what seemed like forever. We ate mid-day chow in that room about an hour into the debriefing, when Wade was still describing his observations. We were still there at p.m. chow, with the Colonel describing his efforts to reach both of the judges for our cases. Our judge had been away on a family vacation and was due back in chambers tomorrow. Kurt's was there but wasn't convinced that he'd learned a big enough lesson to be allowed early dismissal from camp. Darry and Soda tensed up again at that, and I knew they were wondering whether our judge would be just as big a jackass.

The Colonel dismissed everyone about then, acknowledging that no one wanted to eat another meal in that conference room, which, with the doors closed, had become unbearably close. It wasn't hot enough outside to be overly warm in the room, but it was stifling, anyway. He granted Kurt permission to go to the hotel with his parents and asked that we reconvene at 0800 the next morning. He asked the MP staff to stay behind for a few additional minutes.

Of course, the first thing Darry and Soda wanted to know was whether I knew about Wade.

"No," I shook my head. "The whole time we were out there he was just Private Milsap," I said. I thought about it all through chow.

Sgt. Miller's group was at chow at the same time, but he broke away to sit with us. As usual, he'd left LC Clark in charge. That guy sure was earning his insignia. Miller asked me the same question: whether I knew about Wade.

"Nah," I shook my head. "He never said a word about it. Guess that was the point, though."

Miller nodded. "All this time, I thought my complaints were falling on deaf ears, but his first night on fire watch, Wade came down and told me who he really was." Miller shook his head. Now it made sense, the way he'd asked me if Private Milsap had seen Kent dislocate my shoulder. At the time, I'd wondered what difference it made. Now I knew.

I wanted to ask if he thought Wade was acting clumsy and weak, or if he thought Wade really was clumsy and weak. But that would have sounded like an insult, even if I didn't really mean it to be one.

"Anyway," Miller said, chewing at the chow hall's signature rubber chicken, "I wanted to let you guys know you can use Kent's quarters. You're probably starting to get bored out of your minds." He directed that comment at Darry and Soda. He knew I was too grateful to be back to be getting restless yet. He was mostly right. It still felt strange to be back, but I wasn't bored yet. "There's a television set in there," he was saying when I tuned in again, "and there's a small refrigerator. Hot plate on the table for instant coffee, that sort of thing. A few more luxuries." He shrugged. "Or you're still welcome to the hotel room," he added. "Just go over to HQ for a voucher after chow."

Darry looked my way. "Pony?" he asked, leaving the decision up to me.

I shrugged. "Why bother packing up and leaving if I might have to stick around? There are racks and toilets in Red Flag, same as a hotel. And we'll have TV."

Darry and Soda nodded.

Miller mentioned that Nurse Tustin wanted me to stop by after chow to get some ice for my knee. I figured I would get a couple more aspirin from her, too. My knee was bugging me. It had throbbed all through that meeting.

I kept chewing on Wade as I chewed that rubber chicken. I hoped I'd get a chance to talk to him again before everything was all over. If they made me stay, Miller said he'd already requested that I be placed in Black Flag, though for space reasons, my rack would remain at Red Flag. I was surprised they'd let me have a barracks to myself like that. Miller waved it off.

"If you'd wanted out," he said, "you'd have hiked to the highway instead of back to camp."

True enough. But it was more that I didn't really know what else to do besides go back. Anything else would have had the judge down my throat. Plus, I'd figured Darry and Soda had to be here, waiting for me to show up. Where else could they have been? I couldn't imagine them just sitting by the phone in Tulsa waiting for word. We weren't any of us too good with sitting and waiting. Soda was especially not good about waiting.

After chow, I headed over to the infirmary for the ice and, as I suspected, was offered another two aspirin, which I accepted. Walking back to Red Flag, I ran into LC Clark as he came out of the chow hall.

"Hey, Curtis!" he grinned. "Glad to see you," he said. "Your brothers were pretty worried about you."

I nodded. I didn't know what to say.

"I'm sorry about Puzo," Clark said, his voice dropping a notch. He looked at the ground.

I didn't know what to say to that. I'd barely known the guy. It was horrible that he'd died, but all I knew of him was the bully side. But I didn't say that. I just nodded again. In the short time that I'd been back, I'd noticed that Black Flag was different altogether. The guys acted like a team, like a family. To them, Paul's death would seem like the death of a brother. I wished that it felt the same to me. Not that I was glad or anything. And I sure felt bad for his parents. But Paul was no Dally. He was no Johnny to me.

We stood there awkwardly, wanting to talk, but there was nothing to say. Clark mentioned how he'd heard they weren't going to let us go home right away and that they might make us finish the session. I agreed that it was true, and then we fell into another painful silence. Finally, I held up the plastic bag of ice and said,

"I'd better get this ice on my knee or Tustin will have a fit."

Clark nodded. "See you around, Curtis."

I hoped not.

* * *

Ponyboy creaked into the barracks not too long after Miller let us into Kent's quarters. It wasn't anything really special, but I was glad for the TV. Soda was especially glad. He was tired of cards, and since he couldn't have the sort of fun he really wanted, he settled for a variety show, leaping onto the large bed. I wondered if they called a king-sized bed a rack. And then I wondered what they had king-sized beds for, since the drill sergeants slept alone like anyone else. Probably just a status symbol.

Ponyboy stood in the doorway. He looked at the room, but he seemed hesitant to come inside. He probably felt a little weird about it, about stepping into Kent's space. I ducked down and pulled a bottle of Coca-Cola from the little fridge and held it up to him.

"It's not Pepsi," I said, chuckling as he crossed the threshold and had the bottle out of my hand in two quick strides. Limps.

"Close enough," he said, slapping it open with the edge of the table. I winced, thinking it would crack the laminate edge, but it didn't. He took a few long swallows and his face took on a look of pure bliss. I laughed.

"You really did miss it, huh, little buddy?"

He nodded. That's when I noticed the ice he was carrying a knotted plastic bag full of ice.

"Soda, move over," I said. Soda obliged, and Ponyboy eased onto Kent's bed after only a short hesitation.

"Make room for Darry," he said, nudging Soda in the ribs. Soda grinned at him and moved to the far side of the bed. Pony wiggled to the center.

I sat down, sandwiching Ponyboy between Soda and I. I took the bag from him and settled it on his right knee. "Good?" I asked. He nodded and took another drink of the cola.

"That's so good," he sighed. Soda laughed now, too. It felt good to just sit with my brothers doing something ordinary.

Ponyboy passed out in pretty short order, sprawled there between us. After about a half hour, I remembered to pull the ice off of his knee. And I pulled the bottle out of his fist before it could fall over and soak the blanket. If anyone had passed by and caught sight of us through the screen door, I imagined they'd see the two of us, Soda and I, standing watch over our own, doing what the camp hadn't done. Keeping him safe.


	23. Chapter 23

**Std disclaimer: I don't own anything about The Outsiders (book or movie, characters, TV scripts, or anything else)**

I slept so hard that when I woke up and saw Soda's face about two inches from mine, the world turned upside down for a minute and for just a second, I thought we were at home in our room. And then I remembered we had our own beds there, and I poked my head up and everything else came flooding back.

The only way off of the bed was to scoot off of the end. My body hurt, but it was mostly a good hurt, like you get after a very long, hard day's work. Maybe a little worse than that, but still bearable. Kent's room had its own latrine tucked into the far corner, but I ducked out to use the one in the barracks. I still felt strange in that room.

I was just washing my hands and splashing a little water on my face when Soda came in, yawning.

"Hey," he said softly, his voice still thick with sleep.

"Hey," I answered. He reached out and rubbed my head, grinning. He'd been doing it a lot. I didn't know whether it was because he thought it felt so tuff or because he was trying to remind himself I was really here. Maybe both.

"You okay?" he asked, watching my reflection in the mirror as if it wouldn't hide anything but I might. I nodded.

"Just wondering if the judge is gonna let me go home or not."

Soda's eyes darkened. "If he doesn't, Darry and me will spring you, anyway."

I shook my head. "Soda, you know that won't work."

He sighed, but he nodded. "Yeah, I know."

I hated to see him look so despondent and tried to think of something to distract him. "So, did you get a crack at the Roster?"

He grinned. "Nope. Sgt. Miller said he'd get thrown in with Kent if he let me go through. Some sort of rule or something." He tried to look occupied with his fingernails. He tried really hard to keep the grease out from under them, said it turned off the ladies. But he was fighting a grin, and I knew what he was thinking.

I couldn't believe I was actually considering it. If we got caught out there, how was it going to look when it came time to talk to the judge? But Soda kept glancing at me out of the corner of his eye, and the more he pretended not to care, the more I knew he was going to burst.

I poked my head out of the latrine to glance at the clock on the wall. It was fifteen after four in the morning. Reveille would sound in about thirty minutes. It was dark out, but I thought that the floodlights might be lit at their dimmed, fire watch setting. What the hell. Soda was going to go crazy if he didn't get a shot at it. Darry was still asleep, and if we were quiet, he'd stay that way until we'd gone and come back.

"Alright, but you have to be quiet," I whispered, heading for the far barracks door, the one by my rack. Soda nodded and made the familiar turn-of-the-key gesture in front of his lips and tossed the imaginary key over his shoulder.

He was completely silent as we walked out there. My knee still hurt, slowing me down, so he stayed back with me when he could have gotten there at a dead run. I hoped he wasn't going to ask me to do it with him, because I wasn't up for it.

He didn't ask. I think he thought about it, but then he looked down at my knee and just said he wished we had a stop watch. Out at the Roster, which is sufficiently away from all of the barracks, he said he wished Two-Bit or Steve was here to go through with him. But he was still grinning as I dared to call out "What are you waiting for? GO!"

He wasn't half bad. He was through the tires and the mud run and made it up the rope and dropped down again before I could catch up on the sideline, where Kent had liked to stand and bark. Soda always was the warrior type, plunging into anything resembling an adventure without much thought to the consequences.

He was a little clumsy crawling through the wire field, and by the face he made I could tell he'd taken a scrape. Most of us had gone through the first two RCJMC t-shirts we were issued in the first two days of camp and had to turn in our torn drabs for replacements at the supply building. Me, included.

Soda'd hopped enough fences back home that the short wall and the second wall were nothing for him. He almost tripped in mud slush, and I knew exactly the sink hole he'd found with his foot to cause it. It was the same one the rest of us learned to sync our strides to avoid. I hadn't given Soda the secrets because I knew he'd want to live it for himself.

He lost his grip on the ascending bars, and I forgot myself and shouted at him to start over until he got it right. He didn't falter on the descending bars. Because he didn't know to stomp off after mud slush, Soda's attempt to tackle the final barrier, the perpendicular, didn't go so well with his mucky shoes sliding all over the place, but he quickly got the picture and hurriedly rubbed his feet in the grass.

When he made it to top deck, his chest heaving, he threw both his fists up in the air, and I could see that familiar Sodapop grin as he shouted "OORAH!"

I figured what the hell, I'd already shouted a couple of times, myself, so I echoed it back.

He'd wanted to go through it again, in reverse, but we didn't have time. I tapped my empty wrist, and he nodded. When he leapt off the ladder from several rungs up, I grinned. He grabbed my shoulders and then he slapped me on the back.

"That was so tuff!" he told me gleefully. I didn't want to bring him down, so I didn't remind him that after about a billion times, he wouldn't think so anymore. Better for him to just enjoy the moment, because I sure hoped it wouldn't come again. I wanted to be in Darry's truck, pointed toward Tulsa. If that meant Soda would never get a second try at it, so be it.

It was our bad luck that Darry was just coming down the short hallway from Kent's room as Soda and I tried to sneak back into the barracks. Darry's eyes narrowed suspiciously at the sunny look that Soda couldn't hide, and when he noticed Soda's pants were wet, they narrowed even further.

"Are you two nuts?" he asked in a loud, harsh whisper, as if the other barracks might hear him.

"Relax, Darry," Soda chided. "No one saw."

Darry shook his head. "You _are _nuts," he said, mostly to himself, scrubbing his face with his hands. But all he said was, "Well, I hope you got it out of your system. And I hope no one saw you."

Soda and I shook our heads. "No one saw, Darry," Soda repeated.

"You'd better get cleaned up," Darry said, looking down at Soda's wet pant legs. He just nodded and began stripping down.

The camo pants and drab t-shirt I'd been wearing for Kent's nature hike were ruined, and seeing as how I was wearing my spares, I had nothing to change into. I had a couple of pairs of regular clothes, of course, from back home in Tulsa, but we were expected to wash one set and wear the other, alternating indefinitely. I didn't figure the ones I was wearing were dirty, seeing as how I hadn't done anything yesterday to make them dirty. So I just stayed dressed and figured that once the supply room opened, I'd head over there and get another set.

I couldn't sit still. Yesterday was special. Today, at least until the hearing reconvened, I was still Lance Corporal Curtis, and I figured that meant I was expected to act like it until I had a reason to do otherwise. There were no detail sheets hanging by the barracks door, but I knew a few things that had to be done.

I pulled the bedding off of Kent's rack and bundled it with Soda's wet clothes. I put fresh linens on the bed. The rest of the room was still neat and tidy except for the mostly empty Coca-Cola bottle on the bedside table. I took a quick look around to make sure no one saw me finish it. It had gone a little flat overnight, but it still tasted sweet. I dumped the bottle in the wastecan, which wasn't full enough yet to empty.

I swept the barracks floor, just finishing as reveille sounded. In twenty minutes, they would start the DD's in the quad. Because the darkness drills included physical training, I was pretty sure I wasn't expected to show up, but I told Darry I was going to, anyway, just in case. I could tell he didn't understand why I was going, but he didn't argue. He just told me to take it easy on my knee. I nodded.

I found Black Flag in their usual place, which was in the middle of everyone else now that there was no Red Flag. If DS Miller was surprised to see me, he didn't show it. I caught him watching me more than once as we marched and as we did the usual push ups and jumping jacks and such. My jumping jacks were more than a little loose, but no one said anything.

After DDs, I hit the supply building, which opens before any of the other buildings except for the infirmary, which is always open. The clerk there was hesitant to give me another set of drabs, but when I said it was either another set or I'd be forced to walk around in street clothes, he gave me another set.

Darry was in the latrine when I got back, zipping through his morning shave, as usual. He looked at me, and I could tell there was something he wanted to say to me. But he didn't. He just left me alone as I stripped out of my drabs and got into the shower.

After I had showered and dressed, I added yesterday's drabs to the laundry. I couldn't remember what the rotation had left off on, so I didn't know which Flag was on laundry detail for the day. Soda and Darry were in Kent's quarters, watching TV, so I told them I was going over to Black Flag for a.m. inspection. Darry looked at me again like he wanted to say something, but this time I didn't give him a chance. I banged out of the barracks with the laundry, figuring I'd add it to Black Flag's. I wasn't sure anyone was checking Red Flag anymore.

DS Miller acted like it was completely normal for me to line up with his guys for inspection. He found nothing wrong with my appearance and moved on to the next guy. After inspection, though, when his barracks was cleaning up the quarters, he told me that since I was on 1WLD, he hadn't put me on anything.

"Nothing?" I asked. "What about work details?"

"Curtis," he half-smiled, "are you a glutton for punishment, or something? Take it easy for a couple of days. Stay off that knee."

When I explained that Kent never had me off of details, his face lit up with understanding, and I realized Kent had been violating some other rules as Miller explained that light duty meant marching only, and only then if it wasn't an ankle, foot, or leg injury. If it was, a guy wasn't supposed to do much of anything except take classes, help out in the kitchen by sitting on a stool doing food prep chores, and show up for inspections.

"So, you're off the hook for the week, Curtis," he finished. "Go back to Red Flag and keep your brothers company until 0800."

Even knowing for sure that nothing was expected of me, I felt strange just walking back to Red Flag. I felt strange just doing nothing when everyone else was going about their usual business. And I was bored silly. I knew I was crazy to be wishing my knee wasn't hurt so that I could just go through the day with Black Flag until 0800. Just being back at camp made me edgy. I half-expected to hear Kent holler at me any minute, and I wanted to be sure I was doing something if he showed up.

Darry and Soda were watching a cartoon. Soda was. Darry was staring at the screen like he was, but I knew he was a million miles away someplace because he's not much for cartoons. I wished that we had newspapers so that he could read the sports section. I knew I should join them, but I figured it would be time for a.m. chow in another twenty minutes, anyway, so why bother settling in?

I went into the latrine and stared at myself in the mirror for a second. Sometimes I just look in the mirror at myself and wonder what the world sees when they look at me. I wondered it again now.

I remembered Greg's package tucked up in the ceiling tiles, and I figured I should probably bring that to the hearing, so I hopped up on the commode in the first stall and punched up the ceiling tile and brought the package down. Everything was still in it except for the Slim Jim I'd given Wade. I tucked it into my footlocker rather than carry it around through chow.

As Darry, Soda, and I headed to the chow hall, we got a lot of looks from the guys we passed along the way. Now that they were all back to regular duty, we stood out, wandering around the RCJMC with no real purpose. Plus, I was a novelty to them now, the kid who'd been gone for four days.

More than anything, I wanted something to get decided, whether it was to go or to stay. I hated being in limbo, cut off from regular duty, rattling around camp like some sort of special case, yet unable to just walk freely past the gates. If I'd felt like a chained dog before, I felt like it even more now. 0800 couldn't come fast enough.


	24. Chapter 24

**Std disclaimer: I don't own anything about The Outsiders (book or movie, characters, TV scripts, or anything else)**

**

* * *

**

Darry, Soda and I ran into Kurt and his parents just outside the HQ. Kurt was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, much like the other day. He rolled his eyes but grinned when he saw I was dutifully wearing my drabs.

"I thought I'd see you at the hotel," he said.

I shrugged. "We're hanging around here until the judge makes up his mind."

"Why?" he looked at me like I'd grown another head. "Haven't you had enough?"

"It's not like anyone's making me do anything," I shrugged again. I didn't tell him I'd been following the schedule, anyway. He'd really think I was nuts. Or he'd look worried like Darry.

I grinned at his parents when they told me Kurt and I looked a lot better than we had yesterday. "Eating and sleeping will do that for a person," I joked. Mrs. Slozack laughed like it was the funniest thing she'd ever heard, and she patted my arm in a mom-like way. She struck me as that type…always mothering everyone. She probably even cut Mr. Slozack's steak into manageable bites.

The mood in the conference room was solemn. Colonel Messner advised Kurt and I right off the bat that he hadn't heard a final word on either of our cases yet. Darry and Soda got annoyed by that. It was Friday, and Darry had to be back at work on Monday. Soda, well, he was going to have to call Buck at some point soon to explain why he wasn't going to show up for his shift at ten. Just like he'd had to do yesterday. He'd told me on the way back to Red Flag from the Roster that he'd probably have to work a month of Saturdays to make it up to Buck and Steve.

I thought Darry was going to leap over the conference table when Messner asked me to give them my version of the events again. I figured it was like the cops, how they always asked you over and over again what happened, trying to trip you up. So I went through the events again. And they came out exactly the same way they had before. And then Kurt did the same. Wade wasn't here for this meeting, and I supposed that was done on purpose. The other guys in dress blues weren't there, either, although the lady with the ticker tape machine was there, clicking away in the corner.

After the second interrogation, Messner made the mistake of asking if any of us had any questions. Darry nodded.

"What's happening with Kent? Is he still here, or has he been moved to prison where he belongs?"

Messner looked uncomfortable. I bet he was sorry he'd opened up the floor. "Gentlemen, I can appreciate your concerns. We aren't downplaying the severity of the charges against Sgt. Kent, but there is a due process to be followed, in military courts as well as in civilian courts."

"So, you're going to slap his wrist, tell him he's a bad boy and send him back out there?" Soda can be just as sarcastic as Darry and me, but he has to get really, really irritated first. I guess he'd reached that point.

"Sgt. Kent's punishment will be severe…but as I said, Gentlemen, all in due process. That's the last question I'll entertain in regards to Sgt. Kent. Does anyone have any other questions?"

"When will we have an answer from Judge Kimbal?" Mrs. Slozack said and signed.

"Judge Kimbal's docket is full for the next two days," Messner replied. "He advised he'll be examining your case no earlier than Tuesday."

If you think a pissed off brother is bad news, you should see a pissed off mother. "Two days? You're going to leave us stuck here all weekend and into next week because Judge Kimbal thinks he's too busy to make a two minute decision?" She stood up. "I've heard enough. I'll be phoning Judge Kimbal myself, as well as my congressman."

Kurt and Mr. Slozack watched her go with wide eyes and open mouths. Messner, clearly irritated now, ordered one of the staff sergeants at the other end of the table to go after her and try to calm her down and get her to come back inside. I didn't see what else there was to do at this point, why we weren't just being dismissed.

Darry asked Colonel Messner about our judge. I couldn't remember his name to save my life. You'd think the name of a guy who held your future in his hands would stick in your memory a little more. By the looks of him, Messner had had about enough parental (and brotherly) concern.

"We've got a call in to the courthouse, but we haven't heard back yet. We'll be phoning again after mid-day chow. In the meantime, folks, we've got more ground to cover."

The door opened, and I figured it would be the staff sergeant bringing Mrs. Slozack back in, but when I saw Kurt's face, his look of utter surprise told me I was wrong. Every muscle in my body clenched up as I turned to see Kent, Greg, and Charlie filing in to take the three empty chairs that waited off to the side of Messner's at the head of the conference table.

Darry noticed my tension, and he put a hand on my shoulder. Soda, on the other side of me, looked at me with questioning eyes. I nodded slightly. His face shut down into a rare glower. If he doesn't get sarcastic often, he doesn't glower twice as often.

Messner explained that he'd brought Sgt. Kent and Privates First Class Cicarello and Devon into the meeting to allow them to answer the allegations against them. Of course, he had Sgt. Kent go first.

Kent put on quite a show. He explained that overall, I was a good kid who followed orders but that I was sometimes willfully disobedient and had been violent on more than one occasion. He fabricated stories about me spitting in his face, picking fights with Cicarello and Devon, and almost choking Cicarello by putting my foot on his neck. That last one was the only one that was true, but it was only because I was getting desperate over that Roster thing, which I had already explained to everyone.

Darry's hand, which stayed on my shoulder the whole time, tightened until I flinched. He whispered an apology and took his hand off my shoulder, muttering an oath, which drew Messner's eye.

Charlie and Greg told the same tales, and if you want to know the truth, they sounded pathetic about it, like they were reading from a script. I didn't think anyone would buy it. But then I noticed Sgt. Miller wasn't in the room, either. No Wade, no Miller. No allies. No one who would say it wasn't true, that it didn't happen that way. Except me and Kurt, of course, but we didn't count. Messner didn't believe us.

I started to shake. Poor Darry thought it was from fear. He put his hand on my shoulder again, gently this time. I thought I was going to explode if I had to listen to one more minute of it. But I realized, then, that maybe that was what Kent wanted. If he stayed calm and cool as he was doing and I went nuts, who was going to look like the loose cannon?

That brought me down a notch or two. I exchanged a glance with Kurt. His face was flushed and his jaw was so tight I thought his teeth might shatter and explode across the table like so much shrapnel. His movements as he signed their words for his father were jerky and angry. So much so that his father reached out and patted his arms, shaking his head.

Soda looked at me, and there was fire in his eyes. Finally, he couldn't take anymore and he slammed out of the room much the way Mrs. Slozack had. Darry looked at me. I nodded to let him know it'd be okay if he went after Soda.

And then I was alone with Kent and Greg and Charlie. Or it felt that way, anyway. When Messner asked if I had anything to say about what the three of them had just said, I nodded.

"Sir, this whole thing boils down to one set of guys, them, saying one thing, and another set of guys, me and Kurt, saying another. You've gotta look at what's reasonable. Is it reasonable that Kurt and Wade and I would come back to camp if we'd made some great escape in the first place? I could have hitched back to Tulsa in less time than it took to get back here. We had no food, no water, and no gear. I've got bruises I can show you where Kent kicked me. Kurt's got some of his own."

When Messner asked Kurt the same question, Kurt said he figured that I'd summed it up pretty well. I remembered that I'd forgotten Cicarello's package in my footlocker, so I asked if I could go back to Red Flag for a minute because I had something I wanted to show him.

Instead, Messner dismissed the meeting for mid-day chow. He'd decided against making us take chow in the stuffy conference room, I guess. I stepped out and started looking for Darry and Soda. I thought for sure they'd be in the HQ lobby, but they weren't. Neither was Mrs. Slozack.

"If you're looking for your brothers," the receptionist said sternly, "you'll find them outside."

"Thanks, ma'am," I called over my shoulder as I pushed out through the glass doors. And then I stopped short. Soda was wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. That's when Darry looked up at me. "Hey, Soda," I said, "you okay?"

He looked like he might start crying again. "How can you just sit there and listen to all that crap?" he shook his head. He acted like he was mad at me or something.

"I don't have much choice, Soda," I replied. "If I go storming out, you think they're gonna understand? Hell, no. They'll think it's just proof I haven't learned to keep my head, that I'll still go running off the first chance I get."

He sighed. "I guess so." I sat down next to him on the bench and elbowed him. "Cut it out," he said, trying not to smile. I just nudged him again and leapt up from the bench to avoid his retaliation, wincing when my knee protested.

"How about you both cut it out," Darry suggested, grabbing us both by the napes of our necks and pushing us in the direction of the chow hall.

"How 'bout we don't?" Soda nudged him in the ribs from one side, and I nudged him from the other. Darry's hands tightened on our necks, but he was only kidding around.

The mood had far from lifted, though. Soda was still frustrated as hell. Darry was still annoyed and worried, and I was still furious at Kent and Greg and Charlie. And I was more furious at Messner for believing them. He didn't have to say a word. I knew he believed them. I just hoped the judge wouldn't.


	25. Chapter 25

* * *

**Std disclaimer: I don't own anything about The Outsiders (book or movie, characters, TV scripts, or anything else)**

**

* * *

**

Sgt. Miller sat with us at chow. The first thing he asked when he sat down was, "Did Messner bring Kent, Cicarello, and Devon in?"

We nodded in unison. I gave Miller a quick run down of the events, telling him how Messner had us repeat our stories to try to trip us up and how it didn't work. Soda just focused on his plate. He was pretty much at the end of his rope. Miller must have noticed that because he said it didn't mean that Messner believed them.

"Colonel Messner is very thorough," Miller said between bites of clumpy mac and cheese. "Why do you think it's taken me this long to even get an MP in to investigate? Messner is very logical and very deliberate in everything he does. There's a lot of evidence against Kent, but even Wade's firsthand accounts aren't as good as seeing something with his own two eyes."

I grinned. All of us still called First Sergeant Kitchner by the name we knew: Wade. Skinny Wade.

"Yeah, well, what does he need?" Soda asked flippantly. "Does he have to see one of them killed? Wasn't that kid, Paul, enough?"

"The trouble is, guys, that even though Wade has provided eyewitness testimony about Kent dislocating Ponyboy's shoulder and the mess with the Roster and all that, Kent has him halfway convinced that his actions were justified. Maybe not so much with the Roster, but with the shoulder incident, Ponyboy had lunged at Cicarello and they were fighting pretty viciously. Kent says he just grabbed the first guy he could get his hands on and attempted to restrain him." Miller held up his hands when Soda opened his mouth to start hollering back at him. "I'm just telling you the way it plays, guys. And with the neck, Ponyboy had Cicarello pinned in a similar fashion first, so, again, it looks like a disciplinary measure. Does it look a little too harsh? Yes, it does. But…" Miller shrugged and shook his head.

"So, what you're saying is Messner thinks he has to see Pony or Kurt getting abused with his own eyes before he'll believe what he's hearing?" Darry's jaw was tight. The muscles twitched.

"Unfortunately, it's looking that way. The fact that none of you actually saw Kent, Greg or Charlie the night you were driven out of camp isn't helping, either," Miller said. He was just as frustrated as Soda, but Soda didn't see that.

Soda threw his fork halfway across the room and stormed out. I'd never seen him so angry before in my entire life. I started to go after him, but Darry grabbed my arm and pulled me back down.

"Let him blow off some steam," Darry said. "We'll go find him when we're done."

"You think that's a good idea?" I asked, glancing at the doors he'd just slammed through.

Darry sighed. "I don't know. I do know I've never seen him this wound up. I don't think it's a good idea to keep asking him to keep his cool."

That made sense. Soda, being nothing if not kinetic, was going to implode if we asked him to sit patiently by much longer, especially when he so vehemently disagreed with everything that was happening. I just hoped he was blowing off that energy without getting himself into trouble.

Miller just sighed. "Messner plans to wrap things up today. Wade and Captain Tanner will be back for the afternoon session. They'll be asking Kent and the others some questions of their own. This isn't over yet, guys. And I don't think it's as bad as you think."

Darry shrugged. "Tell that to Soda," he said flatly.

* * *

I finished eating as quickly as I could. Mostly, I wanted to make sure Ponyboy finished. If that meant I had to swallow the tasteless goop that passed for food in the place, I would. I thought about Tulsa, wondering just what the hell to do if Ponyboy remained stuck through the weekend. I had to be back on Monday, no ifs, ands, or buts. Murphy'd fire me in a hot minute if I didn't show up early, in fact. But how could I just drive off and leave him here?

He might not be in the sort of trouble he was in with Kent around, but I sure as hell didn't feel good about the idea of heading home without him. Miller was a decent guy. I wasn't worried about anybody hurting him anymore. But Ponyboy had paid his dues and then some. Taking him home with us was the right thing, and I just didn't want to think about things coming out any other way.

The poor kid had been through enough these past few months. What he needed was some R&R. No school. No camp. Hell, I'd even take it easy on him for a few days when we got home, not ask him for too much around the house. The vacation couldn't last forever, but I figured he'd earned one. Of course, knowing him, he'd fidget around doing chores like he'd been doing here. It was like he couldn't just sit still all of a sudden. There's nothing wrong with work, but it was time he just sat down and took a breather. And he needed to stay off that knee. Anybody could see it was bothering him, even though he kept his chin up about it and didn't complain.

He was different, all right. I'm not going to pretend I really understand what goes through his head, but before this place, I could get a reasonable idea by watching his face. Most things he was thinking passed over it at some point. I didn't always grasp the things that I saw there, but most of the time I could figure it out between his face and his body language. But he'd gotten stony on me. Now the only shot I had were his eyes, because his chin didn't quiver anymore and his mouth didn't turn up or down so readily. Even his eyes were getting tough, though. He could look straight through you now, unblinking. Kent had taught him that, I was sure. He'd learned to look largely unaffected. Truth be known, it scared the hell out of me.

When he'd emptied his tray, I didn't have any other reason not to let him go look for Soda, so I gratefully grabbed my tray and followed him to the dish line. "Where do you suppose he went?" I asked Pony, hating how emotionless his face was when he looked at me.

"The Roster, probably," Pony said.

"He'd better not have!" I said sharply, hoping Ponyboy was wrong. The last thing I needed was Soda stirring up trouble when we were supposed to be staying out of it.

But Pony was right. He was standing on the sideline, watching one of the Flags rotate through. At least he wasn't rotating, himself. That was good. And it looked liked he'd calmed down a lot, though he didn't smile when I lightly punched his shoulder.

"I called Buck," Soda said dismally. "He's pretty mad. Said if I don't show up for my shift on Sunday, that's it."

"What about tomorrow?" I watched Pony put a hand on Soda's shoulder, and I was relieved when Soda didn't shrug it off. He wasn't mad enough to take it out on someone undeserving, which would be the penultimate of "Soda Mad", right before hauling off and decking someone, deserving or not.

Soda shrugged. "I had it off before we even left to come out here, so he let me keep it."

"What time Sunday?"

"Noon to eight."

Buck didn't usually keep Soda past six, so I figured he was pretty ripped. "Steve okay?"

"Don't know," Soda answered flatly, not taking his eyes off the guys. "Buck wouldn't let him come to the phone. Said it was too busy for anybody to be making chit chat. But he asked about Ponyboy. Soon as I told him he was okay, Buck hung up the phone."

That wasn't good. Buck Merrill was a good guy, but he was a businessman just like Murphy. He didn't have time for the sort of crap we'd been up to our eyeballs in lately. Friendship was okay so long as it didn't interfere with his livelihood. Not that he wasn't glad to hear Pony was ok. I knew he was, or he wouldn't have asked after him in the first place. But that was all Buck needed to know. The details were of no consequence.

"We should probably see if we can call home," I said. "Find out if Two-Bit got the message across."

Soda just nodded. He was done talking for now. Pony just squeezed his shoulder. Soda reached up and rubbed Pony's spiky head, but he didn't grin. He wasn't there yet.

* * *

Soda's anger made me jumpy and Darry jumpier. We all felt 1300 hours coming, casting a long shadow over us until it finally tipped over and fell. We met up with the Slozacks again just outside the double doors to HQ, and Mrs. Slozack was back. She was quiet, though, and unsmiling, much like Soda. I guessed calling her congressman hadn't worked. Kurt just raised his eyebrows at me.

Wade gave us both a smile. He was going to say something, but Messner started in on a recap of the morning's events for Miller and Wade and Captain Tanner. Kent, Cicarello, and Devon were once again stowed away someplace. Miller had a pretty good line on Messner, because the Colonel pretty much framed things as Miller had: Kent had been too rough with us, no doubt about that. But it wasn't altogether cut and dried as to whether we hadn't deserved what we got. As to our disappearance from camp, Messner wasn't sure what had happened. He couldn't explain Kent taking the truck, but he also couldn't come up with a reason to bind and gag four guys and drop them in the middle of nowhere. What would be the purpose? If Kent had meant us harm, wouldn't he just have harmed us? Why let us go? Why give us a chance to make it back?

I felt almost sick at that. I'd thought exactly the same thoughts, wondered exactly the same things. But I'd managed to come to the right conclusion, which was that Kent knew exactly what he was doing. He may not have expected us to make it back. He might have imagined we'd all end up like Paul. Or maybe he knew this was how things would go down…that Messner would question the oddity of stealing four guys away just to release them. Why go to that sort of trouble, take that sort of risk, and then not see it through?

But at least Messner acknowledged that Kent had behaved inappropriately. If he'd tried to play off Kent's version of discipline as tough love, I think Soda'd be up for murder. In the end, though, Messner didn't have the final say. Captain Tanner advised that the court-martial convening order was still in place. There would be a formal hearing, and the board would be made up of officers who were not in any way involved with the RCJMC. Until that hearing, however, Kent was being released from custody. He would not be placed back in his post at Red Flag, of course. But he'd be on the grounds until a transport arrived on Monday to deliver him to Camp Pendleton in California. He would be restricted to the HQ and the chow hall, though.

That didn't make me feel altogether safe, and I knew it didn't sit well with Soda and Darry. I wasn't touching either one of them, but I sure felt them twist up just the same. But before either of them could say anything, Messner announced a dress blues meeting in the quad at 1700 hours, which was just over an hour away. He told Kurt and I that we were expected to attend, and then he left the room by way of dismissal.

"That sonofabitch better not show his face anywhere near Red Flag," Soda shook his head as we walked back in that direction.

I had a feeling I was going to spend another night squooshed between them in Kent's quarters. Not that I minded. I wasn't crazy about the idea of sleeping on my rack with my right side exposed. Not if Kent would be free to wander.


	26. Chapter 26

**Std disclaimer: I don't own anything about The Outsiders (book or movie, characters, TV scripts, or anything else)**

**

* * *

**

* * *

The change in Ponyboy was somehow magnified by that dress blue uniform. Looking at him was like looking at a stranger with my kid brother's face. Like that old film, _Invasion of the Body Snatchers. _He was gone, and there was someone else inside him. I wanted the old Ponyboy back just then, for good or bad.

Still, I felt a little rush of pride looking at him in that getup, and I just watched him until he finally turned to me and asked, "What?" I just shrugged and turned away, pretending to look for something in my duffle.

"Soda," I said absently, sneaking another glance at Ponyboy as he carefully set the cap on his head. "Maybe you'd better tuck in your shirt."

He looked down at himself. "What for?"

Wordlessly, I gestured at Ponyboy and Soda got the picture. He made a face, but he tucked the tails of his flannel in. I felt terribly underdressed in my t-shirt and jeans, but there wasn't anything we could do. These were the clothes we'd brought.

There was a sea of guys in dress blues in the quad when we arrived. I wanted to hide in the back, away from the blue formality, but Ponyboy shook his head at us. "Red Flag is the first row on the right," he said.

I didn't know whether we should stand at attention like the rest of them, or whether we weren't supposed to, being that we weren't part of the camp. I felt like we'd stick out even more just slouching there, so I stood up straight. But I knew better than to salute the Colonel. Sgt. Miller must have been watching us, because he took pity and pulled us out of the line up, and that's when I noticed the Slozacks standing off to the side. I choked down my embarrassment. It wasn't like there was a handbook for this stuff. I didn't know what the hell to do.

There was a small stage set up in front, and Messner came to stand behind the worn out podium that stood in the center. "At ease," he said, and the sea of blue shifted. Feet apart, white, gloved hands clasped behind backs. "Today, I've called you here for several reasons. The first is to celebrate the bravery and strength of some of our young men. It is no secret that four of our campers went missing for just over three days. Everyone here watched three of those young men return to camp in a dignified fashion that for me, brought back my time as a young soldier in WWII." Messner paused, probably for effect. "The highest rank this camp awards in our accelerated ranking system is that of Corporal, and I'm pleased to bestow that rank on one of these young men. Former Lance Corporal Curtis, please join me on this platform."

Ponyboy did as he was asked, standing straight and tall, with that emotionless mask he'd been wearing. Pride warred with anger as I watched him salute the Colonel, a man who hardly deserved it. Why promote Ponyboy at all? What was the point, if he didn't even believe the things my brother told him?

But Ponyboy accepted the insignia the Colonel gave him over the loud chorus of "OORAHs" that had gone up, and he saluted again before he turned and marched back off of the platform. Not once did he crack a smile. But he joined in the OORAHs as Kurt made Private First Class. I thought that was pretty ridiculous. Kurt should have been far beyond that rank by now, I figured, after everything that had happened.

Soda grinned beside me. I was grateful for that, even if the whole thing was a circus meant to inspire the other guys more than it was really meant to honor anybody. And it wasn't like Ponyboy was going to go out and join the Marines and walk in as a Corporal, so what difference did it make if the RCJMC slapped a title on him? Still, I couldn't stop that annoying niggle of pride that waved from somewhere in the back of my mind.

Once the OORAHs died down, Messner's voice grew solemn. "We can't honor these two young men without remembering that one of the young men in that group of four didn't make it back to camp safely. It is with a heavy heart that I must tell you all that today, just over an hour ago, Private Paul Puzo's body was found by our search team in southern Colorado. It appears that he took a bad fall and that the resulting injuries were fatal. I ask you now for a moment of silence."

I wanted to glance around, to see if Mr. and Mrs. Puzo were present, but I bowed my head and thought again about how it could just as easily be Soda and I in mourning. It made all of this ceremony seem like a slap in the face…promoting two guys for surviving something they shouldn't have had to survive in the first place. It was like a payoff. Like greasing a palm. Not that Ponyboy hadn't achieved something here. But he shouldn't have _needed _to.

Just as the thick silence began to seem overwhelming, Messner spoke again. "On Sunday morning at 0800, we will meet back here, in our dress blues, for a formal service for Private Paul Puzo. Regular duties will be suspended for the day, which will be a day of remembrance and reflection. Our flags will fly at half mast beginning today and lasting through Sunday evening at lights out." Messner let his words filter down into the silence, like feathers from a broken pillow floating gently over the crowd. After another minute, he dismissed everyone, advising that they were to return to their regular duties. Guys scattered off in every direction, with purpose.

I expected Ponyboy to turn and head back our way, but he stayed where he was, watching as the Colonel made his way down the steps of the platform. "Gentlemen," the Colonel said, gesturing to Soda and me. Once we were standing there, the three of us in front of him, the Colonel said, "tomorrow morning I will be receiving Corporal Curtis' paperwork from Judge Harmon by overnight courier. Meet me in my office at 0800. I'll need you to sign the release forms."

Soda broke into a grin so huge I thought it might blind the Colonel. I caught myself, grinning, too, and when I glanced over at Pony, the corners of his mouth turned up just a little. Good enough. For now. But I knew I was going to spend the rest of the summer trying to coax the kid I knew back out of hiding. The kid that smiled. The kid that showed some emotion. I wondered again if he was even in there. I'd spent a lot of time wishing he would use his head, that he'd grow up and wise up to things and not spend so much time with his head in the clouds. The grass is always greener. Truer words had never been spoken when it came to Ponyboy.

* * *

It was stupid or I was crazy, but my first reaction to the Colonel's words was fear. What the hell was I afraid of? What the hell was there to _be_ afraid of? I was going home, for crying out loud! I was finally going to the place I'd been dreaming of since setting foot off the bus. And instead of jumping for joy, I was scared to death almost as much as I was relieved. Maybe more.

Darry'd send me back to the head doctor if he could see how I was feeling. Hell, I wouldn't blame him. I caught him looking at me when the Colonel gave us the news, and he had that same worried face that he always had lately when he looked at me. Soda was beside himself, instantly restored to the bouncing, jazzed up version of himself that had been missing for the past couple of days. Darry and I just let him chatter as we made our way back to Red Flag.

Home. I was going home. It seemed unreal, the same way the idea of camp had seemed unreal until I stepped off the bus into dread.

My knee was killing me. I figured after I got out of my dress blues and back into my drabs, I'd head over to the infirmary for more ice and aspirin. Sgt. Miller foiled that plan, though, because he stopped by the barracks to invite us to a special rest hour for Black Flag. It was just another of the million ways that Red Flag had been different. Who knew that every so often, on a Friday night, the Flags could take a two hour rest and watch a movie in E-4?

Miller grinned. "The projector is an ancient cast-off, and the film will probably jam up about a dozen times, but it will kill an hour or so."

Soda grinned. "Seems like about a million hours to kill, too, before tomorrow morning."

Miller nodded. "I figured. We're playing Machine-Gun Kelly. It's an older film, we're almost ten years behind the rest of the world."

Darry and Soda thought that was just fine. I figured they were bored sick of TV and playing cards. So we sat in the dark, watching Charles Bronson rob banks and kidnap a little girl. I'd seen it before, and I only half-watched it now. When there were about ten minutes to go, I got up out of my chair.

"I'm going to the infirmary, to get some ice for my knee. I'll meet you back at Red Flag."

Darry nodded. He was just interested enough to see the movie through, probably because he never watches them. He never has the time. Soda was pretty fidgety, but I guess he figured watching the end was better than nothing, which was what would come after the movie.

It was quiet. The only thing that all of the Flags do at the same time is take rest hour, and everyone was indoors. I figured the others probably had 2 hours rest tonight, too. It was interesting finding out all the stuff I'd been missing out on just being assigned to the wrong Flag.

Tustin gave me another of her creaky, under-used smiles. "So, how's the knee, Corporal?"

I shook my head. "Hurts," I admitted. "Thought I'd get some ice and some aspirin and go put it up for a while."

She nodded. "Haven't seen you in here for ice," she said. "You haven't been putting it up as much as you should."

I shrugged. "Hard to, with being in meetings at HQ all day."

"Well, looks like you won't have to worry about that anymore after tomorrow morning," she pointed out. "When you get home, you put it up like I told you and you'll see how much faster you heal." She handed me the familiar white tablets and a paper cup, which I crushed and tossed into the waste can after sending the medicine down. Then she handed me another plastic bag of ice and told me to behave myself and maybe she wouldn't see me again next year. I wondered what that meant, if some guys just kept getting sent back over and over again. But I didn't ask. I just nodded at her again and stepped out of the infirmary.

And stepped right into Kent.


	27. Chapter 27

**Std disclaimer: I don't own anything about The Outsiders (book or movie, characters, TV scripts, or anything else)**

Technically speaking, the infirmary was between the chow hall and HQ. But there was no reason for Kent to round the corner of the building where the entrance to the infirmary was located when the double doors to the HQ were a straight beeline from the chow hall's double doors.

I thought all of this as he clamped a hand over my mouth and dragged me out into the fields, toward the Roster. _What now?_ I thought, struggling against him, trying to dig my left foot into the ground. But then he closed his left arm over my throat and growled at me to knock it off. Then he began dragging me up the ladder to top deck.

What the hell was he doing? Fire watch was going to start soon. The floodlights had already dimmed from their evening setting to the night setting. If a guy looked out toward us, he'd see two shadows up there. I had no choice but to help him drag me up or I'd choke to death in his head lock. I had enough air to breathe, but when I tried to yell, all that came out was a pathetic, strangled gasp.

"I told you, Puny. I told you if you badmouthed me in there, you'd never go home, didn't I?"

Shit. Oh, shit. He'd lost his mind. No one would ever think I'd been out at the Roster voluntarily, but he didn't seem to care. When I pointed it out to him, he just laughed and slugged me in the stomach so hard that I couldn't breathe. I couldn't even throw up, because you have to have air to get started at that.

"Puny, you've gotten on my last nerve since the second you stepped off of that bus. I thought sure if I put you out on that bluff, you'd fall down it and break your neck like Puzo. You think I'm afraid of anything? You think I give a damn if they know it was me that threw you off of top deck and finished the job I started? I'll be out the back gate and over at that pretty little hotel taking care of Slowact and his stupid, whiny mother before anybody even thinks to look for you. I'll be in Mexico before that idiot Messner or those half-assed MPs think to team up with the highway patrol to set up blockades."

I kicked him hard, as hard as I could manage, but it wasn't enough. He stumbled but recovered, and it only made him angrier. Crazier. He punched me again, this time across my face so that I saw stars. He hissed a long stream of profane words, some of which I'd never even heard.

And in the next instant, while I was still waiting for my head to clear, he tossed me off of top deck with a hearty shove.

It was too quick for me to realize everything that was going on. I snatched out and grabbed at one of the ropes, which only slowed my fall since the friction burned and tore my hand up and it was simple reflex to let it go and keep falling. There was no way to consciously command my body, and I had no time to consider my landing before slamming down onto my right foot and then my left foot, unevenly. That was when I became aware of chaos through pain.

* * *

When we got to Red Flag and Ponyboy wasn't there, my first thought was that he was held up in the infirmary. But then I remembered how he'd told us about the sour-faced nurse and her quick manner. He'd called her Ratched, which implied they weren't friendly. And since we'd lingered in E-4 after the movie, helping to put the classroom back as it was supposed to be, Pony definitely should have been back with his ice.

"Soda," I almost plowed him down as I whipped around for the door. "Pony's not here."

We both thought of the same thing at the same time. Kent. Maybe not. Probably not. But what if? There was no reason to feel panic, but I felt it. There was no reason to think he was anywhere but on his way back from the infirmary, yet it was all I could think. I shouted for Miller as we ran toward Black Flag. It felt a lot like running for the lot the time the socs got ahold of Johnny, knowing he was there, knowing it would probably be bad. Wanting to get there and not wanting to get there.

I saw the screen open and, in a blur, noticed Miller look out at us, two shadows flying past. He didn't ask questions. He just bolted out of the building. He caught up with us in a few quick strides. He didn't ask where we were going or why. He just trusted that we had a reason to be running, and though it was dark, it was obvious Ponyboy wasn't with us.

As we drew closer to the HQ building, I saw a portly shape burst out of the double doors. Messner saw us about the same time as we saw him. But he pointed furiously to the left, our left, and he headed in that direction several steps ahead of us. And then I knew. The Roster. I didn't know what Messner had seen, or why he thought they'd be there. But I knew it was Kent, and I knew Pony was in trouble. Messner knew it, too. He knew something was happening, and he thought it was happening on the Roster.

We made it there just in time to see Kent shove Ponyboy off of top deck. I never stopped running, just watched him fling an arm out and catch himself on one of the ropes. He couldn't hold it, though, and he landed hard on his right foot first, and then his left. His right knee went one way, and his foot went the other, and his scream cut through the rest of the commotion.

Soda lunged past me in those eerie moments where the world stopped and I saw Pony rolling around, both hands clutching his knee, his face contorted in pain. Soda tried to pry Pony's hands off of it so he could see, coaxing quietly in that soft, soothing voice he used on horses when he talked to them, but I knew Pony had to get through those first few excruciating moments before the worst of the pain would ease off. Then he could let go.

"Pony," I gasped, out of breath, torn between watching him and watching Miller and Messner surround Kent, who was barely six feet away from us on a rope coming down from the Roster. He seemed untouchable to me. He'd managed to get his hands on Ponyboy a second time, and I didn't want there to be a third. But before his feet even touched the ground, Miller had him face down in the dirt, one knee grinding into Kent's back.

When I turned back to them, Ponyboy was curled toward Soda, still holding his knee but no longer rolling wildly from the pain. He was gasping, though, and he groaned when Soda tried to pull his hands off. "Not yet," Pony hissed. Soda backed off for a second.

"Pony," I said, and I squeezed his shoulder. "you're going to be alright."

He nodded and pulled himself up into a sitting position, grimacing and curling his hand up and tucking it into his chest. "Shit, that hurts," he said. With his right knee either freshly sprained or broken and his left hand bleeding and raw, he couldn't get up, though he tried.

"Just wait a minute," I told him, rubbing his stubbly head when it dipped forward. "Catch your breath first," I added. He was shaking, just a little. I wondered whether it was from fear or from pain. Didn't matter. Either one had me wanting to shove Miller off of Kent so I could pound the life out of the guy. I wanted my hands around his throat, crushing until it folded under them. I wanted it so bad it scared me, and I stayed where I was just to keep things from happening that way.

I turned back toward Miller and Messner. I had no kind words for Messner. "You still think those guys deserved what they got?"

It was all I could do, and it wasn't enough. I wanted more. I wanted to smash his grim face in. This was the price paid. My brother was hurt because Messner just had to see Kent's insane, irrational behavior with his own two eyes. I wanted to stop those eyes from ever seeing anything again, to force him to rely on his logic and his gut like any other reasonable person.

Messner didn't answer, but I could tell by his face that my words hit home. He actually had the decency to look ashamed. Stupid coward. How he ever made Colonel, I didn't know.

A crowd had gathered. The guys in Miller's barracks had seen him burst out of their quarters. They probably waited for a while, until the curiosity got the better of them. Messner barked at LC Clark to go into the HQ building and holler for the staff sergeants. Miller was still holding Kent, but he couldn't stay like that forever. And I couldn't stay where _I _was forever. If it took too much longer, I'd lose my brothers to, at the very least, an assault charge.

"You think you can get up now?" I asked Pony. He was still breathing hard, but he seemed to be coming down from the worst of the pain. He nodded. I shoved my hands into his armpits and stood up, bringing him with me. Soda and I stood to either side, and Pony tested his knee. He couldn't put much of any weight on it. We caught him as it gave way and he stumbled. We pretty much carried him to the infirmary. The staff sergeants were just hauling Kent away, and we passed them without a backward glance.

That nurse might have been mean, but she was quick. She was around the desk opening the inner door to the exam area before the outer door closed behind us. "Are you the source of all that ruckus I'm hearing?" she asked sharply.

Ponyboy nodded and actually smirked at her. "Yes, ma'am," he agreed. "Don't suppose you could give me another two aspirin?"

She smirked back at him. "Well, what did you go and do this time? You're a mess." She regarded Soda and me with suspicion. We knew better than to respond. She was talking to Ponyboy. She didn't want to hear a word out of either of us.

When the door creaked open and Messner stepped in, she looked surprised. I guessed he didn't have much call to visit the infirmary.

"Nurse Tustin, what's the status on Corporal Curtis?" he demanded loudly.

Soda had a field day with that one. "Why don't you ask him yourself? He's right in front of you!"

Messner didn't look at him, but Soda had clearly put him in his place. His voice dropped down a notch. "How are you feeling, Corporal?"

Ponyboy just looked at him flatly. He didn't say a word to Messner, which surprised me. I expected a dutiful response, complete with a 'sir' at the end. He was finished playing at military, I guess. A little zing of pride shot through me, followed quickly by hope. Messner had lost his respect. Rather than call him 'sir', Pony chose not to answer at all. Sort of like that old adage: if you can't say anything nice…

Messner just nodded and pretended that my brother hadn't just been insubordinate. "We've got Kent back in custody, and he'll stay in lock up until the boys from Pendleton pick him up on Monday. You come to my office tomorrow morning, Corporal, and we'll get you on your way home."

And then he ducked out of the office, choking on a big, fat serving of crow.

* * *

You'd think I was the Pope in town for a visit the way Darry and Soda guarded me. Not that I minded. I'd seen Kent hauled off with my own eyes, yet I half believed he'd come bursting in any second to finish me off.

I could live a hundred years and not understand the sort of evil that Kent was. I supposed it was only natural to wonder what forces had twisted someone up into something so dark and irrational. I couldn't figure why he was so convinced that he was untouchable, that he wouldn't be facedown in the dirt with one arm pulled up behind him and Miller's knee in his back…why he thought he could just finish his rampage and mosey on down to Mexico and live free.

Tustin had me flat on my back on that table, my knee propped up on two pillows with a bag of ice on top for a good half hour. She gave me those other two aspirin I wanted, and then she cleaned up my hand, which was pretty torn up. It sure smarted when she poured the peroxide over it. I hissed and stomped my left foot on the table to the beat of the vicious throbbing.

Darry and Soda wouldn't leave me alone for a second. They just sat there silently, one on either side as Tustin went about her business with me, icing and disinfecting and wrapping. When she finished, she handed me one of her famous duty sheets. This one said "_HAVE A NICE SUMMER_". I gave her a small smile. This time her own grin looked a little less rusty.

She told us to wait a minute, and she poked around in what looked like a supply closet, but she came up empty handed. "Gave my last set of crutches to a kid in Gray Flag," she told us. "Don't you let him stand on that leg," she barked at Darry and Soda sternly as I started to get off the table. I froze. "You have him put it up and ice it at least three times a day for a half hour."

"Yes, ma'am," Soda nodded dutifully and gave her his best rakish grin. She was immune to his charm. She didn't like him or Darry, just like she hadn't liked me. I figured maybe they just hadn't convinced her yet. "Pick up some aspirin tomorrow morning, before you leave," she said to me. I nodded. "But don't walk on that leg. Send one of them," she ordered, hitching a thumb at Darry and Soda. I nodded again. "I'll see if I can scare up another set of crutches before you head out."

Now that the adrenaline was starting to wear off and the aspirin hadn't fully kicked in, I felt a dull throbbing in my knee, underneath the numbing cold from the ice. Tustin didn't think it was broken. She thought my knee cap had shifted but that it had gone back into place by itself. She said the bruising pattern was pointing that way. I could bend it with effort, though not with a straight face or without a stifled groan. Darry and Soda got on either side of me again. Human crutches.

"You're heavier than I remember," Darry said. That was something, because it hadn't been that long ago that he'd carried me into the house fresh from that hospital visit after the barn door got me.

It was a little embarrassing being pretty much carried by my big brothers. A lot of the Flags were still milling around outside, and there was low buzz that meant stories were being passed. I wondered how accurate the events would be when the last guy heard. Dozens of eyes followed us back to Red Flag, and I had a feeling they stared at the door long after it closed behind us.


	28. Chapter 28

**Std disclaimer: I don't own anything about The Outsiders (book or movie, characters, TV scripts, or anything else)**

**

* * *

**

* * *

Just as I expected, I ended up sleeping between Darry and Soda on the king sized bed in Kent's quarters. I didn't mind it, not really. I wasn't crazy about the alternative, which would have been to sleep on my own rack with the two of them nearby. I didn't want to be left alone, even if it was only a few feet to the next rack. Kent had proven his reach was long and fierce. If he could figure out a way to bust out of his locked cell, he'd do it. It was unlikely, but I was finished with false assumptions. I'd never thought Kent would risk it in the first place, but he had, so all bets were off.

Anyway, I was perfectly content to fall asleep with a wall of Darry on my right and a wall of Soda on my left. Only this time, when morning came, I wasn't the first one to wake up. Darry was. When I woke up, I found myself sprawled in the space he'd left behind. The soft rumble of thunder overhead filled me with dread. I'd had my fill of storms, to tell the truth. It was sort of sad, really, because I used to really love them. The louder the better. Maybe someday I would enjoy them again. But not today.

Soda was watching Saturday morning cartoons. I could tell from the muted slapstick noises and over-exaggerations. Plus, that was just what Soda would do. I closed my eyes again, figuring he hadn't noticed I was awake, but he asked,

"How's your knee?"

"Hurts," I said, giving up on the idea of going back to sleep and staying that way until 0800. Of course, I couldn't even sleep until reveille anymore. The sky wasn't even hinting at daylight yet. "Where's Darry?"

No sooner than I'd asked did I hear the creak of a tap in the direction of the latrine. Soda figured I'd heard it, because he didn't answer. But he reached out and scrubbed my head and grinned. "Bet you can't wait to get home," he said.

I was glad in a lot of ways. The desperate need for a Pepsi had worn off a little, especially since Darry had given me another Coca-Cola from Kent's stash last night. Of course, it wasn't completely the same, but it was good enough to hold me over. I still itched for chocolate though.

When I thought about home some more, I was surprised to realize that although I'd blocked them out, I missed the rest of the gang, too. I pictured the way Two-Bit was going to flip when he saw my hair and suddenly I wanted little else than to hear him razz me. Or have Tim walk in and greet me with his lazy, "Hey, Hemingway." How had I pushed them so far back in my mind? _Why _had I pushed them so far back in my mind?

That was a question I'd been asking myself a lot. The best I could figure is that home needed to be home, separate from this place. Maybe that was why I'd felt so off that first day back at camp. Though I was never more glad to see them, I'd wanted Darry and Soda to remain untouched and untainted. That was impossible now. The darkness of this place had spilled into them, just as it had washed over me. That first day back, when I had showered, I thought I'd never get clean. But now I realized clean had been an illusion. I wouldn't be clean until I was home again and could wash off the dust of this place and watch it swirl down the drain.

Home was exactly what I needed, so why was I still so afraid? For the first time in my life, there was something I didn't want to talk to Soda about. If I told him I was scared to go home, he'd have Darry drop me at the nearest loony bin. I didn't know how to explain to Soda that I was afraid of all the hours of freedom that stretched before me, at least until school started. It wasn't so long ago, I remembered, that I'd dropped my books on the desk and grinned at the thought of all those empty days ahead.

There'd been less structure to my days since the three of us had made it back to camp, but I couldn't explain to Darry and Soda how edgy I felt…how I itched to _do _something. I wanted to know what I was supposed to do next and what was expected of me and where I belonged.

"Hey," Soda said suddenly, rubbing my head again. He'd left his hand there. "you okay?"

"Sure," I said. It wasn't a lie. I was okay. Not great. Not terrible. Okay.

"You're awful quiet," he said, giving me a dubious look. And then he said it. "You can tell me if something's bugging you."

I felt guilty then. I loved him more than anyone in the world. I could tell him anything. I didn't want that to change. For him, I knew, it hadn't. Again, I felt the whirl of the carousel and wanted to get off. "I know," I agreed, yawning. "I'm just thinking about going home." That also wasn't a lie.

"Man," he said, excitement creeping into his voice, "I can't wait for you to see Darry's pictures!"

I almost asked what he was talking about, what pictures. Good Lord. I'd forgotten all about that, about Darry's trip to St. Louis. It felt like a million years ago. And there it was, the little pinprick of excitement I'd been waiting to feel. Hoping to feel.

"There's this one picture," Soda continued, but I rolled over and clapped my hand over his mouth.

"Don't tell me!"

He laughed under my hand, and I couldn't help but crack a smile.

"Don't ruin it for Darry," I added. Soda nodded, understanding. The carousel slowed a little, and I risked hopping off. "I don't know what I'm going to do when we get home," I admitted. "I don't remember what it's like just to sit around and do nothing."

"You won't have much choice, with that knee," Soda pointed out.

This was true. Maybe I'd figure it out. Maybe just being there would bring it back. I hoped so. I really, really hoped so.

Though time couldn't move fast enough for Darry and Soda, it did move. Darry went over to the infirmary just before chow and brought back a pair of crutches that Tustin had rustled up. I was glad for them, though I almost couldn't use them. My left hand hurt almost as bad as that knee, and if I wasn't using my knee, it meant leaning pretty heavily on that hand.

Outside the barracks, the guys we passed still stared at me, but I felt a little more normal with crutches of the non-human kind. It was easier to let it roll off my back. And besides, I figured they were at least a little jealous that I was going home. That gave me another little kick of excitement, and I was just as grateful for that one as I'd been for the first.

Sgt. Miller sat down with us for the last time. He, too, remarked how he thought I must be glad to be going home. This time, when I agreed, there was more truth behind it and less uncertainty. "Curtis," he said, "I can't say I'm glad for what happened to you, but I'm glad I finally got enough on Kent."

I nodded. "Least he won't be hassling anybody else," I agreed. I guessed that almost made it worthwhile, just knowing that Kent wouldn't be able to mess with any more heads.

We made small talk after that, and Miller and Darry found they had a mutual love of sports. Soda joined the conversation by bragging about the contest. I listened to it all with only half an ear, still thinking about how different everything felt. It was only about a month ago that I left Tulsa, but it felt like a lifetime had passed since then. I couldn't get over how odd that felt. The idea of just doing nothing, of flopping on that old sofa on the porch and just watching the world go by was starting to grow on me.

After chow, Miller offered me his hand and I shook it. He told me to take care of myself. "Maybe I'll see you around Tulsa some time," he said. I'd forgotten how he'd told me he was from Oklahoma, too.

"Maybe," I said. Anything was possible, after all.

It was a little early for HQ, so I went over to the infirmary. Darry had gotten the crutches but forgotten the aspirin. Darry and Soda came with me, of course. They still didn't want to let me out of their sight.

Tustin gave me a smile again, and it seemed more natural on her face every time she did it. I grinned back. She glanced at my hand and said, "I didn't think about that, about your hand. Come on back, and I'll wrap it up with more padding so it won't bother you as much to lean on it."

I let her re-wrap my hand, and she was right. With the extra padding, it hurt less. She, too, said I must be glad to be going home. It felt even less like a lie to agree. I swallowed the last two aspirin she would ever give me. "Thanks, ma'am," I said, and I crutched my way out the door with Darry and Soda. They still knew better than to talk to her. She still didn't like them yet.

I'd thought for sure that Colonel Messner would drag the whole thing out, but he didn't. He just sat us down, pulled out a file folder, and pushed a thick packet of courtroom papers across the desk. He explained it released me from camp but that I had to show up for a follow up hearing in Tulsa at the end of August. Then I had to sign it and Darry had to sign as my guardian since I'm still a minor. And that was it. He didn't try to make small talk. He just gave me a piece of yellow paper and told us to give it to the guys at the gate on our way out.

We ran into Wade as we left the HQ.

"Glad I didn't miss you, Curtis," he said, grinning at me. I grinned back. "Heard about the excitement last night," he added, nodding down at my knee. "Captain Tanner shifted his schedule around. We're here to haul Kent back to Pendleton."

"Good," Darry said. Wade lifted his chin at Darry and Soda by way of hello.

There wasn't anything to say to that, so instead I just said, "It was good to have you in Red Flag."

He nodded. "Take care of yourself. Go home and have a Pepsi and a Hershey bar." He grinned.

"We'll stop at the first gas station we see and get you one," Soda teased, popping my shoulder lightly with his fist.

"You'd better believe it," I chuckled. I was surprised that he remembered. "And a pizza," I added.

"From the pizza tree," Wade joked.

"Yeah," I grinned again. I couldn't stand not knowing. "Wade," I asked, "was all that clumsy stuff just an act?"

Darry let out a strangled sort of laugh and clapped my other shoulder. "Pony," he chided.

Wade just threw back his head and laughed harder. "Let's just say it's only by the grace of God that I made it through basic. It's a really good thing that the Marines value a sharp mind as much as a strong body." I was relieved that he was amused by my question rather than offended. "Hell, Curtis," he added, "I mostly push paper around in my current post. I had to step up my PT once I found out I'd be coming here. But my lack of athletic grace helped me out more than I ever expected. Who knew tripping over my own feet would turn out to be a good thing?"

Darry and Soda laughed with him this time, and I smiled. And then Wade stuck out his hand. I shook it.

"Stay out of trouble, Curtis," Wade said. "When you turn 18, I'm sure we'd be glad to have you."

I didn't tell him that the very last thing on my list of aspirations was to be a marine. I didn't want to insult his career choice. I just nodded again, and he went on his way, into the HQ.

In another twenty minutes, Darry and Soda were slinging my bag into the back of the truck with their own, tucking them under the tarp. It looked like it would rain any second, though the sky had stopped growling for the time being. Darry took my crutches and tucked them in the bed of the truck, too, and I hopped up behind the wheel and Soda helped tug me over to the middle, next to him.

Leaving camp was strange. It was like looking up from underwater, and home was the fuzzy, far off pinprick of light at the surface that you strove for with all your might. Then you finally shattered the last barrier and everything overhead was just like you remembered, but brighter…so much brighter that it almost hurt to look at it.

As we rumbled out over the cattle guard and onto the road that led to the highway, I put my head back on the seat and waited to break the surface.

* * *

END

A/N: What are your thoughts? A sequel detailing Ponyboy's life back in Tulsa after camp is a possibility. I'm going to take a little break, though. Don't forget me! I'll be back!


End file.
